Principal Software Engineering Manager

Azure is the fastest-growing business in Microsoft's history and the foundation of Microsoft's commercial cloud services. Within Azure Core, we are advancing Foundational Observability, elevating existing standards and introducing innovations that set a new benchmark for reliability and resilience.

This Principal Software Engineering Manager role is about delivering step-change improvements in telemetry, detection, and recovery across core infrastructure and foundational services. You will lead efforts that enable rapid, localized issue detection and resilient recovery at global scale, ensuring Azure Core meets the highest standards of performance and operational excellence.

You will collaborate across Azure and Microsoft to integrate with existing systems while introducing modern approaches that maximize impact and efficiency. This role involves leveraging and contributing to open-source frameworks and communities. This is a rare opportunity to build a new team, shape platform-wide observability strategy, and deliver solutions that matter at hyperscale.

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.

• Build and lead a team focused on observability for Azure Core services, driving improvements in telemetry, detection, and recovery.
• Advance existing standards and introduce innovations that raise reliability and operational excellence.
• Design scalable, resilient systems that enable rapid issue detection and automated recovery across global deployments.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to integrate with existing systems while introducing modern approaches for maximum impact.
• Engage with open-source communities and frameworks to adopt best practices and contribute improvements.
• Guide incident response and ensure high availability for critical services.
• Foster a culture of quality, innovation, and continuous improvement.

• 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 software engineering experience, including hands-on technical management.
• 2+ years of experience recruiting and managing technical teams, including performance management.
• 1+ year(s) of demonstrated experience in distributed systems, observability tooling, and operational excellence.

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 Qualifications:

• Experience managing managers or multiple engineering teams in a global environment.
• Demonstrated ability to improve operational excellence and reliability at scale, including automation and recovery strategies.
• Experience in service reliability engineering and incident management for mission-critical systems.
• Proficiency in contributing to or adopting open-source frameworks and standards, including engagement with developer communities.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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