About the job
The Principal Software Engineer - AI, ML for our team will operate as a senior technical leader shaping the AI foundations that power Microsoft Path org’s products and platforms at a global scale. This role acts as a strategic and hands-on engineer that works across Core AI, Data Scientists, Software Engineers, Data Engineers, and Product Managers while bringing in deep Machine Learning expertise for supervised and unsupervised learning. As we pivot to build AI-first platforms, this engineer is expected to embed AI-native thinking into delivery models, apply and fine-tune ML algorithms for personalization, and build intelligent, scalable, and innovative solutions to solve customer problems.
Responsibilities
Solve complex challenges in distributed systems and help shape the vision for agentic, AI-powered work management.
Architect and implement core features for the Task and Work Management platform. Ensure secure, high-quality product delivery, overseeing system architecture and code quality.
Lead end-to-end delivery of complex projects with AI-powered solutions that are scalable, robust, and aligned with customer needs as well as business outcomes that support millions of customers and requests per second.
Embed AI-first mindset into design, development, testing, and developer tooling to streamline SDLC delivery workflows, leveraging automation and agent orchestration.
Drive engineering excellence through reusable components, accelerators, code generators, and scalable architecture.
Oversee technical execution across multiple projects, ensuring adherence to best practices, quality standards, and security & privacy compliance requirements.
Collaborate with internal stakeholders and external partner teams to define architecture, integration points, delivery plans, milestones, and risk mitigation approaches.
Ensure delivery models are optimized for modern AI-native execution, including integration of automation and intelligent processes.
Qualifications
Minimum
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.
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
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.
Design and implement agentic AI workflows that assist in data discovery, preparation, profiling, validation, and performance optimization.
5+ years of experience designing and implementing hyperscale distributed platforms and cloud services.
Experience in high-scale service architecture, Azure technologies (Azure Kubernetes Service, Cosmos DB, Blob Storage), and modern cloud patterns.
Actively adopt and promote use Large Language Models and apply Machine Learning algorithms to automate engineering tasks, schema inference, pipeline generation, metadata enrichment, documentation, and tuning recommendations.
Expertise in building solutions using Azure Machine Learning, Azure OpenAI, and Azure AI Services including RAG pipelines and inference workloads (OR equivalent technologies in AWS or GCP or OCI).