Principal Software Engineer

As a Principal Software Engineer on the Azure Artificial Intelligence Core team at Microsoft, you will design, build, and maintain AI systems that power some of the largest workloads on the planet. We enable secure, scalable, and high-performance AI experiences across multimodal verticals, including real-time audio interaction, image generation, video generation and safety. Our work spans the entire stack—from API interfaces to inference backends serving AI models—delivering end-to-end solutions that drive innovation at scale. As part of the Azure OpenAI effort, we collaborate closely with OpenAI and internal partners to advance cutting-edge capabilities. Our team owns critical components such as the safety stack, providing content moderation across different verticals, and real-time APIs, enabling audio-based conversations with large language models through interfaces like SIP, WebSocket, and WebRTC. We benchmark OpenAI and other LLM models for performance on GPUs and Microsoft HW, working together with the inference team to debug and optimize our stacks for reliability and latency. This is a hands-on technical role requiring deep expertise in distributed systems and AI architectures. We are looking for engineers who thrive on solving complex problems, move fast with autonomy, and embrace collaboration across diverse teams. 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. In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.