Principal Software Engineer - Azure Storage

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Join us at Microsoft Azure Storage, where we’re building the core infrastructure powering the world’s most advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Azure Storage underpins Microsoft’s most critical platforms — from Microsoft AI, Copilot and Office to Bing and Azure OpenAI Service — and scales to support exascale training, inference, and data movement across tens of thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) and storage nodes. As AI models grow by orders of magnitude, traditional networking and storage endpoint infrastructure need to evolve. We’re reimagining the network-to-storage data path and endpoint engineering at the Storage front end gateway to deliver ultra-low latency, massive bandwidth, and intelligent data movement — the backbone of next-generation AI infrastructure.

If you’re passionate about solving hard distributed systems problems and building at global scale, this is the place to do it. Team Purpose: As a Principal Software Engineer on the Azure Storage front end team, you'll be integral to shaping one of our core layers. Our team’s mission is to build a platform that sets the standard for scale, reliability, and security in cloud storage, powered by cutting-edge distributed systems technology. The team owns the design and implementation of high-performance, low-latency data paths connecting compute, storage, and networking. Our charter includes building storage front end gateway with next-generation transport protocols optimized for AI-scale data movement, re-architecting the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and storage access stack for minimal overhead and maximum throughput, and collaborating with hardware and internal platform teams to define the future of compute-to-storage communication.

As a Principal Software Engineer, - Azure Storage you will be a hands-on technical leader driving the design, architecture, and implementation of Azure Storage’s scalable networking and storage endpoint infrastructure. Your work will underpin AI training clusters, distributed data platforms, and hyperscale cloud services. You will own critical components of the data plane, from transport protocol design to host-side integration and kernel bypass mechanisms. Architect and build data paths that deliver order-of-magnitude improvements in throughput and latency. Collaborate with hardware, operating system (OS), networking, and storage teams to deliver cohesive, end-to-end performance across compute and storage boundaries. Drive long-term strategy and technical direction for how Azure delivers data to AI workloads at scale. Mentor senior engineers and guide technical decision-making across multiple feature areas and partner teams. Your contributions will directly influence Microsoft’s ability to train and deploy frontier-scale AI models — and shape the architecture of hyperscale data systems for the decade ahead. Join us in shaping the future of data storage in the cloud.

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.

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.
• 5+ years of experience in designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems

Other Qualifications:

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science OR related technical field AND 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, OR Python
  • OR 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 equivalent experience.
• 1+ year(s) experience with a passion for distributed systems and large-scale storage, experience with multi-threaded or parallel programming, and knowledge of modern network and transport layer protocols.
• 1+ year(s) experience demonstrating excellence in software engineering practices, coding with a solid foundation in data structures and algorithms, strong testing, debugging, and analytical skills, proven ability to plan, schedule, and deliver quality software, and a determined approach to reliability, performance, and architecture; personable and positive with high emotional intelligence, and driven to own cross-team initiatives and improvements to enhance Azure Storage.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $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

Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

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• Partners with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for a set of scenarios.
• Leads identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
• Leads by example and mentors others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across products.
• Leverages subject-matter expertise of cross-product features with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive multiple group's project plans, release plans, and work items.
• Holds accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), mentoring engineers across products/solutions, working on-call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
• 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.