Principal Software Engineer

Windows is a complex and mature product, and one of the largest codebases on the planet. We have ambitious business goals, and the architecture we have built over decades can make some changes more difficult to achieve. One of our key high-level goals is to ensure that our technologies, architecture, and decisions accelerate our ability to achieve our business goals, rather than stand in the way.
Ensuring we make quality decisions requires establishing, maintaining, and building strength in our engineering organization. We need everyone’s help to grow each and every one of us with the capability to design and build complex systems, whether we’re early in career or a seasoned Windows veteran.
The India team is setting up and growing in the areas of a lot of key aspects of Windows focusing on next generation of Windows Assistive Technologies using AI to make Windows the most Inclusive O.S

Responsibilities
Technical Leadership for the Group Engineering Manager Team. You will be seen as and will be playing the technical leadership role at the GEM level where you will be setting up, reviewing, signing off and contributing to the technical and architectural decisions made by various EM teams across the reporting GEM. You will act as driver, consultant, bouncing board and also champion for such technical choices and directions. You will be expected to represent the GEM and it’s projects at Director or WDX level communities to be able to align and bring back the cohesiveness in the technical and architectural stream.
Contributing to the Architecture Community. Great ideas come from everywhere. Our goal is for every group to have architecture representation, ensuring that everyone gets their feedback heard and the design help they need. All will be welcome to participate in review forums, documents, and the other work of the architects with a particular focus on building strength in our EIC community. You will also be responsible to be deeply connected with the other Principal IC community within WDX and being deeply involved with the top issues they are helping with and bring new issues to that group for WDX India that will most benefit from their expertise.
Writing it Down & building infrastructure. The cumulative decisions we all make on an individual level, in combination, form our overall system architecture. You will drive and contribute to producing documents that support easy offline sharing, commenting and review of the important points of any significant choice. To reduce process, we will look at you to drive and contribute to defining templates to make quick-specs through TSD-scale multi-organizational architectures that ensure consistent detail and review flow.
Review Forums. You will be here to help, supporting from one-pager reviews to get early design insights and coaching, all the way through any needed reviews. This individual will set up forums for review of their team’s work. They also will know when to bring in others from around WDX India or WDX overall so we’re all working together.
Planning and Strategy. While we encourage teams to dream the future of Windows unrestricted by technical realities, we also understand that technical realities exist that make some efforts more costly or difficult to achieve than others. Identifying these “big rocks,” up-leveling the visibility of our hardest problems and building a multi-release approach for addressing them will be a key role facilitated by the individual in this position.
Leadership Team Participation. This role reports to the Group Manager and as such you are a key member of the GM’s Leadership Team. You will participate in a wide variety of decision-making discussions and will need to bring your unique viewpoint to the table, share, and help us make the best decisions. Similarly, you work on a wide variety of group-impacting activities whether it is D&I initiatives, training, communications, etc.
IC Mentor and Confidant. As an approachable member of the leadership community with a role most similar to the ICs in the org, you will need to devote some of your focus to mentoring and growing others and having your pulse on the IC community. You will need to bring that back to the leadership and ensure we make changes to make the IC employee experience as great as possible. Many people will see you as a path to the Architect and Principal Engineer, so you will need to represent the Group Manager and their LT in the way they would.

Qualifications

Deep technical experience including leading others
Researching (and perhaps building prototypes and beyond) some new ways of doing something
Demonstrates a mastery of communication and data presentation and storytelling skills.
Exhibits a growth mindset and humility, while working through high stakes scenarios.
Proven experiences as an ally who can further a more open, diverse, and inclusive workplace with a goal of everyone feeling like they belong
Demonstrated hypothesis-driven, problem-solving orientation
Strong design, coding, debugging, teamwork, and communication skills
12 + years of experience shipping commercial software.
5+ years of experience with C++ and Windows is a huge plus

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Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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, *** (including pregnancy), ****** orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.