Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.
Are you interested in working for on cutting-edge cloud security products? Would you like to be part of one of the world’s most advanced cyber-security solutions and protect millions of computers from thousands of active attack attempts, every month? Look no further than the Microsoft Defender engineering team. You will be building and delivering cloud solutions to meet the scale that few companies in the industry are required to support. Leveraging state-of-the-art technologies, you will be instrumental in delivering holistic protection within government environments. The Microsoft Defender team is responsible for delivering a constantly evolving set of services and solutions to meet the challenging landscape of our ever-evolving attackers.
This is a combined DevOps team which provides leadership, direction, and accountability for cloud design, service architecture, engineering infrastructure, and data platform development. We are currently looking for Software Engineer II to join the team. You will help conduct business reviews and operate our production services. Collaboration skills will be required to work closely with other engineering teams to ensure services and systems are highly stable, meet performance Service level agreements (SLA), and meet the expectations of internal and external customers and users.
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
- The team provides leadership, direction and accountability for application architecture, Cloud design, Infrastructure development and end to end implementation for our Sovereign and Government Clouds.
- Demonstrated collaboration skills will be required to work closely with other engineering teams to ensure services/systems are highly stable and performant and meet the expectations of internal and external customers and users.
- Build and improve services to be scalable and highly reliable.
- Help deliver and improve engineering systems and practices to deliver services in complex cloud environments.
- Contribute to design and automate service scale features and customer requirements.
- Investigate pre-production and production issues, implement, and deploy fixes.
- Participate in an on-call rotation (typically 24/7 for one week every 6-8 weeks) within a secure facility.
Other:
- Embody our Culture and Values
Qualifications
Required/minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- OR equivalent experience.
The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret Clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) based on a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) with Polygraph. Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required pre-offer and post-hire for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate U.S. Government clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.
- Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.
- Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
- Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of U.S citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local United States government agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport, or other approved documents, or verified US government clearance.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Master'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 Bachelor'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 equivalent experience.
- Understanding and experience with CI/CD concepts and Git.
- 4+ years of Windows / Linux hands on system experiences
- Experience debugging issues ranging from the operating system, application, and all the way to the cloud.
- Experienced in solving operational issues in a scalable way.
- Ability to thrive with the ambiguity associated with working in a fast-paced and changing environment.
- Support a 24x7 live site support model for the services the team owns.
- Experience with Kubernetes, and the Kubernetes satellite technologies
- Some experience with building and supporting large-scale production services, including logging, monitoring, alerting, and measuring reliability and availability.
- Proficient in at least one scripting language but knows when to move solutions into managed code.
- Experience with Azure DevOps and GitHub tooling.
- Demonstrated communication skills and ability to collaborate in a multi-disciplinary team consisting of Software Engineers, Program Managers, Security Researchers, and Data Scientists.
Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $160,200 - $261,000 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 related field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience coding in C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python (or equivalent experience).
- Active U.S. Government Top Secret Clearance with SCI based on a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) with Polygraph.
- U.S. citizenship and ability to verify citizenship (passport or approved documents).
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements pre-offer and post-hire, and pass Microsoft Cloud background check.
- Participate in on-call rotation (typically 24/7 for one week every 6-8 weeks) and support 24x7 live site support model.
- Coding experience in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python.
- Understanding/experience with CI/CD concepts and Git.
- Hands-on Windows and Linux system experience (4+ years).
- Experience debugging across OS, application, and cloud layers and solving operational issues at scale.
- Experience with Kubernetes and related satellite technologies.
- Experience with Azure DevOps and GitHub tooling.
- Experience building/supporting large-scale production services including logging, monitoring, alerting, and measuring reliability.
- Proficiency in at least one scripting language and knowledge of when to move solutions to managed code.
- Demonstrated communication skills and ability to collaborate in multi-disciplinary teams.
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.

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