About the job
We’re building AI-first growth and experimentation systems that scale across Microsoft. This role is about designing foundational engineering systems (instrumentation, experimentation, rollout, and decisioning) that let teams ship, measure, learn faster with higher confidence. As a Principal Growth Engineer in CoreAI, you’ll drive the technical strategy for how we measure, experiment, and scale AI experiences across world-class products — while remaining deep in the details and landing meaningful changes daily. At this level, impact comes from building repeatable systems and raising the engineering bar: better experiment quality, better telemetry, safer rollouts, and clearer business outcomes — delivered through pragmatic execution and deep technical judgment.
Responsibilities
Own growth through engineering excellence and experimentation — at a systems level
Architect and build paved paths for online experimentation: standardized metrics, guardrails, analysis workflows, and rollout automation that improve reliability and decision quality across teams
Lead multi-workstream initiatives that span teams/products (e.g., unified growth measurement, cross-surface funnels, experimentation quality improvements)
Build and evolve core capabilities: telemetry foundations, experiment assignment/targeting, feature flighting, and risk controls (kill-switches, guardrails, progressive delivery)
Partner with Product, Data Science, Design, and Research to turn ambiguous goals into shippable, measurable systems
Stay close to the work: write production code, review designs/PRs, and coach others through architecture and implementation tradeoffs
Qualifications
Minimum
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. Other Requirements: 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
8+ years building and shipping high-availability features for multi-region, globally distributed systems (resiliency, failover, capacity planning)
4+ years of experience in experimentation with emphasis on quality: guardrails, bias detection, metric integrity, rollout risk management, and enterprise grade experimentation
Demonstrated experience building experimentation/measurement platforms (feature flags/flighting, assignment, metrics pipelines, analysis tooling) used by multiple teams
Demonstrated experience leaning heavily on AI to accelerate engineering velocity, including using AI tools to prototype, implement, debug, and iterate on production systems
Cross-team influence: you create clarity, align stakeholders, and drive execution across organizational boundaries — without becoming a “piece-mover”