Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS)-Core accelerates customer outcomes and business growth. By uniting product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners around a common customer mission, we help customers realize value faster and turn innovation into measurable business impact. Through deep technical expertise and differentiated go-to-market execution, we win competitively, capture market share, and scale repeatable growth motions. We differentiate through value creation - delivering world-class, AI-powered customer experiences that accelerate adoption, strengthen loyalty, and create sustainable competitive advantage, driving growth that outpaces the market.
The Strategic Workload Acceleration Team (SWAT) is a highly technical team that accomplishes three strategic goals: 1) Work directly with our most strategic customer projects worldwide to ensure they are successful on the platform 2) Ensure our engineering teams fully understand the end-to-end technical details of their services through the eyes of our customers 3) Share best practices with the larger Customer Success community worldwide.
The Principal Software Engineer role in Strategic Workload Acceleration Team (SWAT) will drive architectural and programmatic oversight for strategic initiatives, aligned with Microsoft’s priorities around AI innovation and enhancing platform resiliency. By providing depth of insight for architecture improvement and innovation, this role is critical in planning and driving execution of strategic programs that deliver on MCAPS-Core mission and operational goals.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
Responsibilities
- Drive innovation in AI and strategic technologies aligned with Microsoft’s priorities: Holds subject matter expertise in other tools inside and outside areas of expertise. Leads identification of internal tools and creation of new tools that will be useful for creating the product, determining if methods are still applicable for the current solution. Focuses on Commercial Success and platform/product adoption. Shares best practices and teaches others about new tools and strategies. Remains current by investing time and effort into staying abreast of current developments.
- Strengthen customer trust through enhanced platform resiliency and security: Partners with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project manager, technical lead) to determine user requirements for one or more complex scenarios. Leverages a variety of feedback channels to incorporate insights into future designs or solution fixes. Leads incorporation of appropriate continuous feedback loops measuring customer value, usage patterns, and other actionable metrics of value. Determines additional critical metrics. Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale and shares knowledge with other engineers.
- Drive strategic partnerships with a focus on customer experience: Partners with CxOs to identify, prioritize, and scope programs/projects to significantly improve customer value for Microsoft and collaboration with engineering and product teams. Leads incorporation of appropriate continuous feedback loops measuring customer value, usage patterns, and other actionable metrics of value. Determines additional critical metrics.
- This is a hands-on technical role spanning across design, build, and production deployment on customer projects with a focus on issue resolution to remove customer production blockers. In this role, the Principal Software Engineer will switch from a whiteboard to hands-on engineering.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- OR equivalent experience
Additional or preferred qualifications
- Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- OR equivalent experience.
Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, or comparable languages
- Equivalent practical experience may substitute for the bachelor's degree and experience requirement
- Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 12+ years of technical engineering experience
Microsoft Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Microsoft and has not been reviewed or approved by Microsoft.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is presented as broadly competitive overall, with clear role/level/location variation and an emphasis on using posted ranges and band information for apples-to-apples comparisons.
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Retirement Support — Retirement benefits are described as a standout, highlighted by a strong 401(k) match structure and immediate vesting, plus additional plan features for tax-advantaged saving.
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Parental & Family Support — Family-oriented benefits are portrayed as a meaningful strength, with substantial paid parental leave and added supports like back-up care and adoption/surrogacy assistance.
Microsoft Insights
What We Do
At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create. Today, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world.








