Principal Engineer Architect

Windows is the best OS experience on the planet. Windows helps more than a billion people around the world to Do Great Things, and we are looking for Principal Engineer Architect to drive critical growth bets across multiple Windows customers and segments.

The Windows Experiences team is responsible for delivering seamless and integrated AI experiences in Windows for consumers, information workers, frontline workers, gamers, and others. In this role.  You’ll partner closely with other teams in Windows, as well as across Microsoft.

Windows is a complex and mature product, and one of the largest codebases on the planet. We have ambitious business goals, and the architecture we have built over decades can make some changes more difficult to achieve. One of our key high-level goals is to ensure that our technologies, architecture, and decisions accelerate our ability to achieve our business goals, rather than stand in the way. 

Ensuring we make quality decisions requires establishing, maintaining, and building strength in our engineering organization. You will be responsible for identifying long-term architectural investments, solving cross-organizational technical challenges, driving engineering excellence, and ensuring that our platform evolves to meet the demands of an AI-first future. This role requires exceptional strategic thinking, deep technical expertise, and the ability to influence senior leaders across organizations.

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.

Technical Leadership for the WXP IDC org

• You will be seen as and will be playing the technical leadership role at the WXP IDC GM level where you will be setting up, reviewing, signing off and contributing to the technical and architectural decisions made by various GEM teams across the org. You will act as driver, consultant, bouncing board and champion for such technical choices and directions. You will be expected to represent the GEM and their projects at Director level communities to be able to align and bring back the cohesiveness in the technical and architectural stream. 

Contributing to the Architecture Community

• Great ideas come from everywhere. Our goal is for every group to have architecture representation, ensuring that everyone gets their feedback heard and the design help they need. You will also be responsible to be deeply connected with the other Principal IC community within W+D and being deeply involved with the top issues they are helping with and bring new issues to that group for W+D India that will most benefit from their expertise. 

Writing it Down & building infrastructure

• The cumulative decisions we all make on an individual level, in combination, form our overall system architecture. You will drive and contribute to producing documents that support easy offline sharing, commenting and review of the important points of any significant choice. To reduce process overhead, we will look to you to drive and contribute to defining templates that enable quick specifications for large-scale, multi-organizational architectures while ensuring consistent detail and review flow.

Review Forums

• You will be here to help, supporting from one-pager reviews to get early design insights and coaching, all the way through any needed reviews. This individual will set up forums for review of their team’s work.

Planning and Strategy

• While we encourage teams to dream the future of Windows unrestricted by technical realities, we also understand that technical realities exist that make some efforts more costly or difficult to achieve than others.  Identifying these “big rocks,” up-levelling the visibility of our hardest problems and building a multi-release approach for addressing them will be a key role facilitated by the individual in this position. 

Leadership Team Participation

• This role reports to the WXP IDC GM and as such you are a key member of the GM’s Leadership Team. You will participate in a wide variety of decision-making discussions and will need to bring your unique viewpoint to the table, share, and help us make the best decisions. Similarly, you work on a wide variety of group-impacting activities whether it is D&I initiatives, training, communications, etc. 

IC Mentor and Confidant

• As an approachable member of the leadership community with a role most similar to the ICs in the org, you will need to devote some of your focus to mentoring and growing others and having your pulse on the IC community. You will need to bring that back to the leadership and ensure we make changes to make the IC employee experience as great as possible.  Many people will see you as a path to the Architect and Principal Engineer, so you will need to represent the Group Manager and their LT in the way they would. 

Required Qualifications:

• 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.

 Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent industry experience.
• 12 + years of experience shipping commercial software. 
• 5+ years of experience with C++ and Windows is a huge plus.
• Deep technical experience including leading others. 
• Researching (and perhaps building prototypes and beyond) some new ways of doing something.
• Demonstrates good communication and data presentation and storytelling skills. 
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across multiple organizations without direct authority.
• Exhibits a growth mindset and humility, while working through high-stakes scenarios.  
• Proven experiences as an ally who can further a more open, diverse, and inclusive workplace with a goal of everyone feeling like they belong. 
• Proven experience leading architecture for enterprise-scale platforms, operating systems, cloud services, or highly distributed systems.
• Demonstrated hypothesis-driven, problem-solving orientation.
• Solid design, coding, debugging, teamwork, and communication skills.           
• Planning and Execution: Ability to think holistically and strategically. Leverage understanding of execution rhythm so that the team operates at a high level, knowledge is shared appropriately, and decision making happens at the right levels on the team. Proven ability to plan, organize, and manage complex technical products.  
• Communication: Able to conduct insightful, multi-faceted conversations with senior product and technical decision makers inside and outside Microsoft. Conceptualize complex ideas quickly and convey those thoughts to others in a clear, effective and motivating manner.  
• Collaboration: Experienced collaborator able to work effectively across broad teams and influence stakeholders of all levels and of all disciplines across Microsoft.
• Cultural Leadership: Proven ability to lead cultural initiatives, having positive impact on team morale and fostering an environment of inclusion.  
• Microsoft Values: As a senior member of the Windows Engineering Team, candidates must be excellent representatives of the Microsoft cultural attributes and leadership principles.  
• Judgement: Excellent technical judgment. Consistently demonstrating maturity and intellectual curiosity, helping the team pursue the best ideas.
• Windows and/or Experience in Artificial Intelligence is an added advantage. 

#W+DJOBS

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.