Principal Software Engineering Manager

Business Group Overview

Within AI Platform, the Azure AI Search team powers rich knowledge base experiences for apps of all kinds. We integrate the best of Microsoft AI for content understanding, search relevance, and knowledge sources.

Job Purpose Overview

As aPrincipal Software Engineering Manager, you will shape end-to-end customer and developer experiences for Azure AI Search-ensuring customers can discover, adopt, and succeed with AI capabilities atglobalscale. You willoperatewhere product experience meets cloud services, settingdirectionthatimprovesreliability, security, and time-to-value.

You will lead and grow a high-performing team that discovers, defines, and delivers new productcapabilities-often turning ambiguous customer needs into clear, shippable features and reliable components. You will foster a high-trust environment where engineers collaborate, move quickly, and continuously raise the bar in a demanding and exciting space. You will also apply evolving AI tools and AI-assisted engineering practices to design, implement, test, and ship AI features faster andmore safelyacross UX flows, portal experiences, samples, SDKs, and APIs.

You will thrive in a highly dynamic environment by staying close to users-listening, learning, and translating feedback into product and experience improvements. You willownkey entry points and integration experiences (including partner integrations) so customerscanonboard smoothly, extend the product confidently, and realize value quickly.

You will set technical direction and drive operational excellence from design through production-building forsecurity, reliability, and observability, and ensuring features can beoperatedwithconfidence atscale.You'llestablishstrong engineering systems (quality, incident readiness, and release practices) and use data from real-world usage to continuously refine theproductexperience.

Success in this role is measured by outcomes customersfeel:simpler onboarding, clearer and more consistent experiences across every surface area, and secure, reliable features that run smoothly inproduction-enabling faster adoption of new AI capabilities. Success is also reflected in the team you build: a high-trust, high-performance culture that adapt

• Leadsthedisciplined adoption and continuous improvement of AI tools and Responsible AI practices across the SDLC, ensuring accountability for AI-generated assets and using engineering health metrics to drive measurable process improvements and share learnings.

• Leads engineering excellence for production services by driving diagnosability and incident prevention (debugging, telemetry, retrospectives), strengthening secure and privacy-preserving operations (least privilege), and raising code quality through timely, high-signal reviews, automated analysis, and best practices (including GenAI) to deliver secure, maintainable, high-performing code while proactively managing blockers and risks.

• Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring. Model: Live our culture. Embody our values. Practice our leadership principles. Coach: Defineteamobjectivesand outcomes. Enable success across boundaries. Help the team adapt and learn. Care: Attract andretaingreat people. Knoweach individual'scapabilities and aspirations. Invest in the growth of others.

• Leads cross-group planning and execution (project/release/work management) by breaking long-term vision into milestones, driving estimation and capacity planning, and ensuring secure, compliant delivery with operational readiness (flighting, rollback, and disaster recovery).

• Partners with internal and external stakeholders tovalidateuser requirements and feasibility, incorporates customer insights and success metrics (including accessibility/globalization), and advocates for customer security and privacy needs across the solution.

Minimum 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.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Computer Scienceor related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, butnot limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python ORBachelor's Degree in Computer Scienceor related technical field

• 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.

• 4+ years of people management experience, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and building high-trust, high-performing teams.

• Experience owning end-to-end customer and developer experiences across one or more product surfaces including defining requirements and driving delivery.

• Experience with distributed systems and production operations (reliability, incident response, observability/telemetry, and safe release practices).

• Experience designing and delivering secure services, including identity/access patterns and privacy/compliance considerations.

• Demonstrated use of AI-assisted engineering tools to improve SDLC quality and velocity, including responsible use of AI-generated assets

• Strong customer empathy with a track record of using qualitative and quantitative feedback to iterate product experiences.