Senior Software Engineer

Overview

The Senior Software Engineer (Backend) role focuses on designing, building, and scaling distributed backend services that power Microsoft's consumer and enterprise ecosystems. You will work in high-performance environments supporting Microsoft Teams which is a default communication system for millions of users across the globe.

As an Senior Software Engineer, you operate as an independent engineer, deepening your technical craft, owning feature level responsibilities, improving service quality, and contributing to architectural discussions.

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

Core Backend Engineering

• Design, implement, and maintain largescale distributed systems and microservices.
• Ship high-quality, secure, well tested, and maintainable backend code.
• Build services with a strong emphasis on availability, scalability, performance, robustness, and observability.
  
  

Ownership & Execution

• Take end-to-end responsibility across development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and production readiness.
• Participate in defining key use cases, user scenarios, and service behaviors. .
  
  

Collaboration

• Work closely with cross functional partnersproduct, design, reliability, and peer engineering teams.
• Communicate effectively and contribute to a culture of engineering excellence and shared ownership.
  
  

Long-Term Engineering Excellence

• Contribute to architectural thinking, emphasizing simplicity, maintainability, and resilience.
• Ensure services are modular, diagnosable, reusable, and fully observable.
  
  

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. Proficiency in backend languages such as C#, C++, Java, Scala, or Python.
• Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, distributed systems, and service architecture.
• 8+ years of Experience building scalable cloud services, ideally on Azure (microservices, distributed storage, observability).
• Ability to debug complex problems, optimize performance, and deliver reliable high scale services. (Derived from backend SEII candidate 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

• Master'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 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.
• Experience with bigdata, MLdriven backends, or largescale computation frameworks (Spark, Hadoop, Kafka).
• Knowledge of modern DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, containerization (Kubernetes, Docker, Helm).
• Ability to mentor junior engineers and contribute to inclusive team culture. (SEII competency: mentor lightly, collaborate deeply.
  

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.