Principal Software Engineering Manager

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Ready to lead a foundational system that powers Azure? We’re hiring a Principal Software Engineering Manager to lead the team behind Azure’s configuration distribution platform—a foundational service critical to how configurations are delivered across our cloud. This is a high-impact role for someone who thrives on solving tough distributed systems challenges, growing engineering teams, and building reliable infrastructure that other services depend on every day.

Our mission is to standardize and scale configuration distribution across Azure, making it more reliable, secure, and efficient in a constantly evolving cloud environment. This isn’t just another backend service—it’s a platform that underpins how services across Azure operate, deploy, and stay resilient. Configuration distribution is one of the hardest problems in cloud-scale systems. Services today run on dynamic fleets of microservices, containers, and virtual machines, deployed across multiple regions and zones. These fleets are in constant flux—scaling up, down, and redeploying with minimal notice. Ensuring that every instance gets the right configuration at the right time is critical for system reliability, security, and operational speed.

You’ll be leading a team that’s solving these challenges head-on—designing scalable systems, working across org boundaries, and laying down the foundation for service teams to build with confidence. If you're ready to lead from the front, make technical and organizational impact, and shape the future of Azure’s infrastructure, we’d love to talk.

This Principal Software Engineering Manager position offers a unique opportunity to lead a high-impact team developing a foundational service within Azure’s cloud ecosystem. This role involves building and scaling distributed systems that are central to service reliability, configuration management, and platform consistency across Azure. You will work alongside experienced engineers and technical leaders, contributing to strategic decisions and driving execution across a broad technical surface area. The role supports both technical depth and leadership development, offering exposure to complex engineering challenges, cross-functional collaboration, and customer-centric design. As a people and technology leader, you will guide a team through data-informed development, leveraging both qualitative feedback and quantitative signals to deliver solutions that meet real user needs. With organizational backing, a clear technical charter, and flexibility for up to 100% remote work, this role provides a foundation for long-term growth in both technical and leadership dimensions.

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/Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, or Rust
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 4+ years of coding/designing experience in distributed systems cloud based services.
• 2+ years people management 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.

Additional or 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#, or Rust
  • 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#, or Rust
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of coding/designing experience in distributed systems cloud based services.
• 4+ years people management experience.

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• Guides partnership with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project manager, technical lead) to determine user requirements within and across teams.
• Guides teams and leads identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
• Drive adoption of configuration distribution standard and best practices for configuration distribution in Azure. Collaborate with stakeholders across the organization to evangelize the benefits of distributed systems and facilitate their adoption.
• Optimizes, debugs, refactors, and reuses code to improve performance and maintainability, effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI).
• Guides team to drive multiple group's project plans, release plans, and work items in coordination with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers).
• Guides team and acts as an expert for Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) and monitors other engineers across product lines, working on call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
• Leads product development and scaling to customer requirements and applies best practices for meeting scaling needs and performance expectations and holds accountability for products that do not meet expectations.