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Microsoft Substrate is the foundational cloud platform that powers many of Microsoft’s most critical services including Exchange Online and M365 Copilot, providing shared infrastructure, identity, messaging, storage, and service-to-service capabilities used across Microsoft 365 and related cloud offerings. Substrate services operate at global scale and are designed to deliver high availability, reliability, security, and compliance for some of the world’s most demanding workloads. We are seeking a Principal Software Engineering Manager to lead a mixed organization of Site Reliability Engineers and Software Engineers responsible for building and operating Substrate services across highly regulated and enterprise-critical environments. This role requires strong technical depth, operational judgment, and people leadership, with the ability to scale impact through managers while remaining deeply connected to engineering fundamentals and service health. As a principal-level manager, you will define and drive technical and organizational strategy, grow senior engineering leaders, and partner across engineering, security, compliance, and operations to ensure Substrate services are reliable by design. You will be accountable for delivering durable engineering systems, strong operational posture, and a healthy, high-performing organization that can sustain long-term business growth.
Job Responsibility:
Lead and develop Site Reliability Engineering Managers, coaching them to build strong, accountable SRE organizations and scale operational excellence through others
Lead a set of Software Engineering ICs, ensuring strong software engineering fundamentals, clear technical direction, and high-quality execution across the engineering lifecycle
Own the end-to-end engineering and operational health of your organization’s services, balancing feature delivery, reliability, security, and compliance
Establish and drive technical and organizational strategy for your area, aligning engineering investments with business priorities and long-term platform goals
Guide engineering design and architecture decisions, ensuring reliability, diagnosability, security, and compliance are embedded early and consistently
Drive strong incident management, learning culture, and post-incident reviews, emphasizing systemic improvements and long-term resilience
Develop senior and principal-level talent, including succession planning for managers and technical leaders
Partner closely with product, security, compliance, infrastructure, and operations teams to deliver durable, auditable, and scalable services
Communicate clearly and credibly with leadership, articulating risks, tradeoffs, priorities, and progress across technical and organizational dimensions
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
Ability to meet security clearance requirements for Microsoft Government cloud environments (GCC Moderate, GCC High, Department of Defense)
For access to GCCH and DoD environments: ability to obtain and maintain a favorably adjudicated Tier 3 (T3) background investigation
For access to GCCM environments: ability to meet Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) eligibility requirements
For manager-level roles: a Tier 5 (T5) background investigation is preferred
Must pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter
Nice to have:
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 OR 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
4+ years people management experience
Experience operating or supporting services in regulated, sovereign, or compliance-sensitive environments