Principal Software Engineer - Windows Cloud Division at Microsoft
Redmond, WA
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Aug 17, 2026
Redmond, WA
Sep 25, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor engineering role focused on designing, building, and operating large-scale cloud microservices. The engineer will lead architecture and design decisions across multiple products, mentor other engineers, own on-call responsibilities, and drive integration testing and observability improvements. Suits an experienced software engineer with a strong background in distributed systems and a track record of cross-team technical leadership.
Senior level · 6+ years
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 18, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The posting offers two parallel experience paths: (1) a Bachelor's degree in CS or related field plus 6+ years of coding experience, or equivalent experience without a degree; and (2) 7+ years of coding experience. Degree requirement is treated as None because equivalent experience is explicitly accepted.
The primary language requirement lists C#, Java, C, and C++ as the core set (from the 7+ years path), with JavaScript and Python appearing in the broader 6+ years path. C# is used as the canonical skill name with the others captured as alternatives.
The alt SOC 15-1211 (Computer Systems Analysts) is noted because the role has a significant stakeholder requirements-gathering and design-documentation dimension, though the primary work is clearly software development.
'AI-assisted development tools' is listed as a hard requirement based on the posting's explicit language ('Demonstrated experience leveraging and championing AI-assisted software development') in the requirements section, though no specific tool is named.
No compensation range is stated in the posting.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): AI-assisted development tools.
Read the full posting
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