Principal Software Engineering Manager

Overview

The Spartans (Special Projects and Resources Team) are a vital part of the Substrate Platform organization, which forms the foundational backbone powering Microsoft 365 workloads like Exchange, SharePoint, and Teams. Substrate is dedicated to delivering reliable, scalable, highly available, secure, and compliant cloud services for Microsoft 365 applications.

As a Principal Software Engineering Manager on the Spartans team, you will lead and develop a team focused on high-impact, cross-cutting challenges that enhance agility and modernization across Substrate. The Spartans team tackles complex, organization-wide initiatives, enabling engineers to accelerate development, adopt modern platforms and technologies, and operate services more efficiently at cloud scale.

This team drives strategic efforts such as building the Substrate Context Layer for intelligent agents, leading large-scale platform and language modernizations, achieving cost efficiencies through Linux and ARM adoption, and supporting engineering excellence via initiatives like the Substrate Bootcamp. This role offers a unique opportunity to lead technically deep work, influence platform-wide direction, and deliver capabilities that power Microsoft 365 experiences for first-party partners, enterprise customers, and consumers worldwide.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Employees cultivate a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to achieve shared goals, upholding values of respect, integrity, and accountability to foster an inclusive culture.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop a diverse team of engineers committed to delivering meaningful and lasting customer value.
• Collaborate with Engineering Managers, Architects, and cross-disciplinary leaders to drive AI-forward, large-scale modernization of services.
• Provide clarity in complex problem spaces, define and execute roadmaps, and build high-performing teams capable of iterating effectively towards impactful solutions.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field AND 6+ years of technical engineering experience, including coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python; OR equivalent experience.

Other Requirements

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience mentoring, onboarding, and growing engineers through inclusive leadership, coaching, and a growth mindset.
• Demonstrated ability as an effective execution leader, driving results across organizational boundaries by creating plans, aligning stakeholders, and delivering measurable improvements in systems, code quality, and engineering practices.
• Commitment to engineering standards, including clean design, testability, observability, and operational readiness, with a focus on reusable patterns, documentation, and playbooks.
• Experience leading short, outcome-driven strategic initiatives that unblock critical efforts such as platform modernization, reliability, cost optimization, compliance, and developer productivity.
• Proficient communicator capable of clearly conveying progress, impact, and lessons learned to executives and partner teams, transforming insights into scalable, repeatable practices.

Key skills/competency

• Software Engineering Leadership
• Cloud Platform Development
• Microsoft 365 Substrate
• Large-Scale Modernization
• Team Mentorship & Development
• Distributed Systems
• AI-forward Solutions
• Cost Optimization
• Engineering Excellence
• Stakeholder Alignment