Principal Software Engineer Job at Microsoft Corporation (Redmond)

Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft Corporation

Location:
United States , Redmond

Category:
IT - Software Development

Contract Type:
Not provided

Salary:

139900.00 - 274800.00 USD / Year

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Job Description:

The Bing Multimedia team is shaping the next generation of AI-powered visual discovery, helping people explore, understand, and make decisions through images at global scale. We build the intelligent systems that power Bing Image Search and multimodal experiences across Microsoft’s AI ecosystem. As a Principal Software Engineer on the Image Search Experience team, you will define and build AI-native platforms that combine multimodal understanding, large language models, and high-performance distributed systems to deliver rich, adaptive visual experiences. You will work across system architecture, core services, and experience-level intelligence to enable new ways for users to search, explore, and interact with visual information. This role offers the opportunity to operate at the highest level of individual contribution: setting technical direction, shaping foundational systems, and delivering production-grade AI experiences used by millions of people worldwide.

Job Responsibility:

Set technical direction for AI-powered image search, shaping how intelligent systems understand user intent, adapt to context, and deliver meaningful visual experiences at global scale
Own high-impact product and platform areas end to end, translating complex user needs into durable system designs and production-ready solutions
Apply large language models and multimodal AI in production, integrating reasoning and grounding capabilities to improve relevance, usefulness, and overall experience quality
Enable intelligent, adaptive experiences, ensuring image search systems make holistic decisions that guide users through exploration, refinement, and decision-making
Design and operate scalable platforms, driving high standards for performance, reliability, and efficiency under real-world workloads
Define success metrics and experimentation strategies, using data and user feedback to validate impact, guide tradeoffs, and inform long-term technical direction
Influence across teams and raise the engineering bar, partnering with product, design, data science, and platform teams, mentoring engineers, and guiding architecture and design reviews

Requirements:

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
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#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
OR equivalent experience
Experience building search, recommendation, or large-scale information retrieval systems
Hands-on experience with LLMs, multimodal AI, or AI-driven reasoning systems in production
Experience designing evaluation, experimentation, and quality metrics for AI-powered systems
Background in image processing, computer vision, or content understanding pipelines
Track record of mentoring engineers and driving engineering best practices at scale
Solid product intuition and ability to balance user value, system complexity, and operational constraints
Deep expertise in distributed systems, backend services, and cloud-based architectures, including performance optimization and reliability at scale
Proven ability to lead and influence service architecture beyond a single team, while remaining hands-on in critical areas
Demonstrated ownership of high-impact technical problem spaces, from problem definition through delivery and long-term evolution
Experience integrating AI/ML capabilities into production systems, including large language models or agent-like systems
Experience working with metrics, quality signals, and experimentation, using data to evaluate system behavior and user impact

Additional Information:

Job Posted:
February 20, 2026

Employment Type:

Fulltime

Work Type:

On-site work

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