Principal Software Engineer AI Safety and Security

AI systems are rapidly becoming more capable autonomous interconnected and embedded in products people depend on. As models gain memory tools identity and the ability to act across systems new risks can emerge through long-running interactions coordinated agents and behavior spanning accounts products and timeoften beyond what any individual product or runtime control can see. Within the Artificial Generative Intelligence Security (AeGIS) team the AI Safety Platform (AISP) is Microsofts shared AI observability detection investigation and hunting platform built for this new landscape. We connect fragmented activity across Microsofts AI estate and turn it into reusable detections investigation-ready evidence threat intelligence and customer protection.

We are looking for a hands-onPrincipal Software Engineer for a deeply consequential technical builder role at the intersection of cybersecurity and generative AI. You will lead through code and ideas: defining detailed architectures building large-scale data and detection systems working through security and privacy reviews and partnering with cross-company leaders product engineers applied scientists threat hunters and incident responders from early exploration through production operation. The ideal candidate is deeply curious about how AI systems work how they break and how to make them safer and more robust.

We are a mission-driven collaborative team that leans into uncertainty learns quickly and builds on one anothers ideas. Our people bring a wide range of backgrounds disciplines and life experiences and we believe that diversity makes both our engineering and our judgment stronger. We want someone energized by technically fascinating problems and by the responsibility to protect users at the scale of some of the worlds most widely deployed AI platforms.

Microsofts 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.

• Lead the design and implementation of shared platform capabilities: guide architecture and technology decisions establish reusable engineering patterns write critical production code and unblock complex technical work across teams.
• Build and evolve company-wide AI observability and monitoring systems that enable attack reconstruction automated detection evaluation threat hunting and investigation using modern agentic development tools and AI-assisted coding workflows to prototype evaluate and iterate rapidly.
• Design detection infrastructure for attack signatures pattern matching behavioral anomaly detection model-assisted analysis and emerging research techniques. Apply emerging AI security research to detection evaluation observability and safer implementation patterns.
• Build and operate large-scale distributed data processing systems using technologies such as Spark Kusto data lakes and batch and streaming platforms. Develop high-volume data integrations and correlation pipelines that turn multi-source telemetry into investigation-ready evidence threat intelligence trends and reporting.
• Drive technical partner conversations and security and privacy architecture reviews resolve detailed design constraints and work with teams through integration and implementation.
• Review designs and code mentor engineers and scientists and raise the technical bar across teams.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6 years technical engineering experience including significant ownership of distributed data platform or security products with coding in languages including but not limited to C C C# Java JavaScript or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check:This position will be required to pass the Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 2 years of experience working on modern AI systems such as copilots agent-based products LLM applications agent orchestration and tool use embeddings vector databases retrieval-augmented generation or evaluations.
• 2 years of experience big data engineering such as Spark Kusto data lakes batch and streaming pipelines data quality performance tuning and cost and reliability trade-offs.
• Demonstrated success designing and delivering complex production systems in ambiguous cross-functional environments identifying and addressing security and privacy risks in complex production systems.
• Proven coding system design written communication and technical leadership skills.
• End-to-end technical ownership of complex platforms data security or AI products.
• Hands-on experience with alerting triage investigation threat hunting or incident response.
• Experience leading security and privacy architecture reviews applying threat-modeling and secure-by-design principles and translating review requirements into implementable designs.
• Deep understanding of agentic systems tools memory embeddings and AI system failure modes.
• Experience with cloud-native distributed platforms infrastructure as code CI/CD and technologies such as Azure Data Factory Databricks Kubernetes or equivalent systems.
• Demonstrated record of mentoring and influencing engineers researchers product leaders and partner organizations without direct authority.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142800 - $274800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188000 - $304200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
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.

Required Experience:

IC