Principal Software Engineering Manager

Principal Software Engineering Manager

Overview

The Windows Store team is building the place where customers discover and engage with the apps, games, and experiences that make Windows valuable, and where developers can reach Windows customers and grow their businesses.

We are looking for an experienced Principal Group Engineer Manager to join the Windows Store team and help shape the next generation of Store experiences.

This is a role for an engineering leader who enjoys working at the intersection of product, platform, developers, and customers. You will lead a team of software engineers building experiences and services that need to operate with high reliability, security, performance, and quality. You will partner closely with Product Management, Design, Data Science, and engineering teams across Windows to turn ambiguous customer and developer problems into clear technical direction and delivered outcomes.

We are looking for someone who can combine solid technical judgment with great people leadership. You should be comfortable going deep on architecture and engineering decisions while also building a healthy team, developing engineers, driving execution, and creating an environment where people can do their best work.

As AI changes how software is discovered, built, distributed, and used, you will also help us rethink what an app store should become in an AI-first world.

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.

Responsibilities

As a Principal Group Engineer Manager on the Windows Store team, you will:

• Lead and grow a solid engineering team. Hire, coach, mentor, and develop engineers while creating a culture of ownership, inclusion, learning, and engineering excellence.
• Provide technical leadership. Work with engineers to make sound architecture and design decisions and build systems that are scalable, reliable, secure, maintainable, and performant.
• Own outcomes end to end. Translate product and business goals into engineering plans and drive execution from design through implementation, experimentation, rollout, and operation.
• Champion the customer and developer experience. Use customer feedback, developer feedback, product signals, and engineering data to identify problems and continuously improve the Store.
• Drive engineering fundamentals. Build a culture where security, privacy, accessibility, quality, performance, telemetry, reliability, and operational excellence are part of how products are engineered from the beginning.
• Operate what you build. Establish solid service-health practices, telemetry, incident response, root-cause analysis, and continuous improvement.
• Lead through ambiguity. Bring structure to complex problems, make thoughtful tradeoffs, establish clear priorities, and help the team move from ideas to measurable outcomes.
• Partner across organizational boundaries. Work closely with Product Management, Design, Data Science, partner engineering teams, and other Windows organizations to align architecture, dependencies, and execution.
• Embrace AI-native engineering. Help the team use AI effectively throughout the engineering lifecycle and explore how AI and agents can create new value for Windows customers and developers.
• Create clarity and energy. Connect the team's engineering work to the broader Windows and Store mission so engineers understand not just what we are building, but why it matters.

Qualifications

Required 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, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
  • OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field and significant software engineering experience, or equivalent experience.
• Experience designing, developing, and shipping production software.
• Experience leading or managing software engineers and helping engineers grow in their careers.
• Solid understanding of software architecture, engineering fundamentals, testing, debugging, performance, and operational excellence.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex engineering projects involving multiple teams and dependencies.
• Solid written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate technical decisions and tradeoffs clearly.
• Track record of working effectively across engineering, product, and other disciplines.
• Experience building large-scale cloud services, consumer applications, Windows applications, developer platforms, or commerce/distribution systems.
• Experience with Windows development technologies such as C++, C#.
• Experience with Azure and building highly available distributed services.
• Experience operating large-scale production systems, including telemetry, live-site management, incident response, and reliability engineering.
• Experience working with developer ecosystems, app distribution, marketplaces, or developer-facing platforms.
• Experience applying generative AI, LLMs, agents, or AI-assisted engineering techniques to real products or engineering workflows.
• A solid product mindset and demonstrated ability to connect engineering decisions to customer and business outcomes.

 

 

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This 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.

Experience Level

Senior Level