Principal Software Engineer Manager - Windows Validation and Quality Engineering

Overview

Come build community, explore your passions, and do your best work. The Windows Servicing Delivery (WSD) organization is responsible for delivering protected, productive, and predictable servicing experiences for Windows customers around the world. As security threats complexity and volume of vulnerabilities increase, WSD is investing in modern validation capabilities that improve engineering confidence, release quality, transparency, and reliability across the Windows servicing ecosystem. 
 
The Validation team operates a portfolio of validation programs, platforms, release-readiness signals, and quality workflows that help engineering teams identify risk and make informed servicing decisions. This position offers a unique opportunity to transform validation from a collection of established solutions and independently operated programs into a connected, intelligent, and AI-powered engineering capability. 
 
As a Principal Software Engineer Manager, you will lead the Validation organization and define the strategy for how Windows servicing validation evolves for the AI era. You will establish and execute on the technical and organizational roadmap that combines human engineering judgment with AI-assisted reasoning, automation, telemetry, coverage intelligence, and agentic workflows. You will modernize how validation is planned, executed, analyzed, and operationalized across the engineering lifecycle, while improving the speed and quality of feedback provided to engineering teams. 
 
You will lead a high-performing engineering team, oversee the portfolio and execution evolution model for multiple validation programs, and provide leadership for vendor and contractor-delivered validation work. You will be accountable for aligning internal and external investments to validation priorities, quality expectations, coverage objectives, cost effectiveness, and measurable engineering outcomes. You will partner across WSD, Windows Engineering, security, release management, engineering systems, product management, finance, procurement, and partner organizations to reduce duplication, improve reuse, and build shared validation capabilities. 
 
This role is for a leader who can operate today's validation portfolio while reinventing its future. You will help shift validation from test execution and reactive analysis toward continuous risk intelligence, accelerated learning, and trusted release decisions supported by AI.

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

Validation Strategy and Transformation 

• Define and drive a strategy to transform existing validation solutions and programs into a cohesive, intelligent, and AI-powered validation ecosystem. 
• Reimagine how validation is planned, executed, analyzed, and operationalized across the engineering lifecycle, balancing near-term delivery with long-term transformation. 
• Establish measurable outcomes for engineering confidence, release readiness, risk reduction, coverage effectiveness, quality, speed, and cost efficiency. 

Engineering Leadership and People Management 

• Lead, coach, and develop a healthy, inclusive, high-performing engineering team by creating clarity, setting priorities, and growing technical and leadership capability. 
• Build an operating model that combines engineering ownership, domain expertise, platform thinking, and accountable execution across globally distributed teams and partners. 

AI-Powered Validation and Engineering Intelligence 

• Drive development and adoption of AI-powered validation agents, automated investigation capabilities, risk assessment, coverage intelligence, and engineering decision-support systems. 
• Apply AI where it improves validation quality, accelerates learning, reduces repetitive manual analysis, identifies coverage gaps, and produces actionable engineering insights. 
• Establish evaluation, auditability, responsible AI, human oversight, and quality practices for AI-assisted validation decisions. 

Validation Portfolio and Program Leadership 

• Own the strategy, prioritization, investment roadmap, and operational effectiveness of the validation portfolio across multiple programs, platforms, and engineering scenarios. 
• Evaluate existing validation programs and identify opportunities to modernize, consolidate, integrate, scale, or retire solutions based on engineering value and risk. 
• Unify validation results, coverage metrics, servicing indicators, security signals, compliance activities, and release-readiness evidence into clearer views of engineering confidence. 

Vendor, Contractor, and Execution Management 

• Provide leadership and governance for vendor and contractor-delivered validation programs, including scope, priorities, quality expectations, delivery commitments, operational performance, and outcome measurement. 
• Partner with finance, procurement, operations, and engineering stakeholders to align external investments with organizational priorities, improve accountability, manage execution risk, and maximize the value of validation spend. 

Cross-Organizational Influence 

• Partner across Windows TSX, Windows Engineering, security, MSRC, servicing, release management, engineering systems, product management, and partner organizations to align validation strategy, dependencies, interfaces, and readiness expectations. 
• Influence senior technical and business stakeholders, resolve competing priorities, and create shared solutions that reduce duplication and improve reuse across validation efforts. 

Engineering and Operational Excellence 

• Establish architecture, software quality, reliability, observability, security, privacy, live-site, and operational readiness practices for validation platforms and services. 
• Use telemetry, experimentation, incident learning, and outcome metrics to continuously improve platform health, program execution, and customer impact.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum 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.

Additional or preferred qualifications

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:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field AND 10+ years of experience in software development, validation engineering, quality engineering, platform engineering, engineering systems, distributed services, or related technical disciplines OR equivalent experience. 
• 4+ years of people-management experience leading software engineers or multidisciplinary engineering teams responsible for production services, platforms, validation systems, engineering infrastructure, or operationally critical programs. 
• Experience defining technical strategy and leading complex engineering transformations involving architecture, organizational change, dependency management, and delivery across multiple teams and stakeholder groups. 
• Experience designing, building, and operating large-scale software systems, validation platforms, automation frameworks, data pipelines, telemetry systems, or engineering decision-support capabilities. 
• Experience leading a portfolio of engineering programs and establishing priorities, execution mechanisms, quality expectations, operational metrics, and accountability for measurable outcomes. 
• Experience managing work delivered through vendors, contractors, or external engineering partners, including scope, delivery, quality, performance, risk, and stakeholder alignment. 
• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related technical discipline. 
• Experience leading software validation, quality engineering, release engineering, security servicing, vulnerability response, certification, compliance-sensitive engineering, or other operationally critical engineering domains. 
• Experience transforming fragmented programs or point solutions into shared platforms, reusable services, unified operating models, or portfolio-level capabilities. 
• Experience developing or adopting AI-powered engineering workflows, agentic systems, intelligent automation, engineering copilots, automated investigation, or risk-assessment solutions. 
• Experience designing coverage measurement, quality analytics, test-to-code mapping, risk intelligence, release-confidence, or engineering-readiness systems. 
• Experience applying responsible AI principles, evaluation frameworks, auditability, governance controls, quality measurements, and human-in-the-loop practices to AI-enabled systems. 
• Experience managing financial plans, external resources, supplier relationships, or contract execution for a portfolio of engineering programs. 
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders and drive technical and organizational alignment across broad engineering ecosystems. 

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Software Engineering M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

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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.