Principal Software Engineering Manager

Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft

The Spartans (Special Projects and Resources Team) are a part of the Substrate Platform organization—the foundational backbone that powers Microsoft 365 workloads such as Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and more. Substrate is responsible for delivering reliable, scalable, highly available, secure, and compliant clouds for Microsoft 365 applications.

As an Engineering Manager on the Spartans team, you will lead and grow a team focused on tackling high-impact, cross-cutting challenges that unblock agility and modernization across Substrate. Spartans take on complex, organization-wide initiatives that enable engineers to move faster, adopt modern platforms and technologies, and operate services more efficiently at cloud scale.

The team drives strategic efforts such as building the Substrate Context Layer to enable intelligent agents, leading large-scale platform and language modernizations, enabling cost efficiencies through Linux and ARM adoption, and supporting engineering excellence through initiatives like the Substrate Bootcamp. This role offers the 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. 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

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

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 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.

Other Requirements:

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:
• 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 Qualifications

• Experience mentoring, onboarding, and growing engineers through inclusive leadership, coaching, and a growth mindset.
• Effective execution leader able to drive results across organizational boundaries by building plans, aligning stakeholders, and delivering measurable improvements to systems, code quality, and engineering practices.
• Demonstrated commitment to engineering standards, including clean design, testability, observability, 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 who can clearly convey progress, impact, and lessons learned to executives and partner teams, turning insights into scalable, repeatable practices.

Key skills/competency

• Software Engineering
• Technical Leadership
• Cloud Platforms
• Microsoft 365
• Modernization
• Team Management
• Strategic Planning
• AI/ML Integration
• Scalability
• Problem Solving