Principal AI Software Engineer - DevOps Acceleration

The Commerce Engineering organization within Microsoft Commerce builds the platforms behind how Microsoft sells to and serves customers and partners worldwide. We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer with one mission: use AI throughout DevOps to sharply reduce the time from idea to launched feature.

You're a practitioner with passionate opinions. You've used the industry's AI developer tools, and you know where they help, where they're overhyped and where they create new risk. You'll set the design principles that make our engineers faster while keeping the guardrails a global commerce business needs. You'll also be a critical voice: you'll challenge our assumptions, compare our approach with the best in the industry, and raise the quality of what we ship.

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.

• Shorten the path to launch. Map the full lifecycle from idea to production, find the biggest delays, and remove them with AI and automation.

• Put AI into every stage of DevOps: planning, coding, code review, testing, release, rollout and incident response. Move what works from pilot to the default way of working.

• Set principles with clear opinions. Define global design principles for using AI in engineering, including where it should and shouldn't be used, and make sure teams adopt them.

• Build in guardrails. Speed must not cost us security, compliance, Responsible AI or reliability. Deliver this through automated controls, not manual approvals.

• Bring the industry's view. Continuously evaluate AI tools and practices across the industry, make clear build, buy or skip recommendations, and keep Commerce Engineering ahead of the curve.

• Be the critical voice. Challenge designs, roadmaps and AI claims with evidence, so our offerings get better instead of just looking busy.

• Measure what matters. Track progress with metrics such as lead time, deployment frequency, change failure rate and developer experience.

• Lead through influence. Mentor senior engineers, lead architecture reviews, and set technical direction across Microsoft Commerce.

• Embody our culture and values.

Required/Minimum 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, Go, Rust, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.

Other Requirements:

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

Preferred/Additional Qualifications:

• A proven record of using AI tools or agentic workflows to measurably shorten engineering cycle time at scale.

• Deep, hands-on knowledge of the AI developer tools landscape, with well-reasoned opinions on what works.

• Demonstrated DevOps and SRE background: CI/CD, infrastructure as code, Kubernetes, safe deployment and observability.

• Experience building engineering guardrails, such as policy as code, supply-chain security and compliance automation, in regulated environments.

• Experience with LLM-enabled applications, AI agents or production AI platforms.

• Clear and direct communication, with a record of influencing senior leaders without direct authority.