Microsoft Specialized Clouds is at the forefront of delivering comprehensive cloud solutions for sovereign, disconnected, edge, enterprise, and hybrid environments. We extend Azure's capabilities to the customer edge, ensuring mission-critical workloads operate with enterprise-grade resilience, security, and performance.

We are seeking a Principal Engineering Manager to lead a team building vital Azure Local capabilities. This role involves significant technical and people leadership, driving the development of critical Azure Local features in partnership with Azure-wide engineering and product teams to create seamless customer experiences.

Our mission at Microsoft is to empower individuals and organizations globally. As a team, we embrace a growth mindset, foster innovation to empower others, and collaborate to achieve our collective objectives.

As Principal Engineering Manager, you will steer the technical direction, engineering execution, and people leadership for a team dedicated to critical Azure Local capabilities. You'll bridge organizational divides, translating product strategy into actionable engineering plans and spearheading complex initiatives from architecture to production deployment.

Your key responsibilities will include leading and developing a high-performing engineering team through expert technical guidance, coaching, and fostering a culture of excellence. You will define and execute the engineering strategy for core Azure Local areas, converting customer needs and business objectives into robust architectures and measurable outcomes. Driving complex projects from conception through to deployment, including architecture, implementation, integration, validation, and operational readiness, will be central to this role. You will also provide authoritative technical leadership in distributed systems and cloud infrastructure, guiding architectural and design decisions for scalable, reliable, and secure solutions. Collaborating closely with Product Management and other Azure engineering teams to navigate technical trade-offs, manage inter-team dependencies, and resolve impediments for end-to-end solution delivery is crucial. Engaging with geographically dispersed stakeholders, contributing to design, planning, execution, and influencing overall project outcomes with your team is also expected. Cultivating engineering and operational excellence across development, testing, automation, CI/CD, observability, security, live-site operations, and service reliability will be a continuous focus. Developing future technical leaders through mentorship and delegation, while championing data-driven engineering and AI-assisted development practices to enhance productivity and quality, are key leadership aspects. Partnering with customers and field teams to gather insights and translate feedback into product enhancements will ensure our solutions remain relevant and impactful.

We are looking for a candidate with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, coupled with over 15 years of technical engineering experience, including hands-on coding in languages such as C#, .NET, Go, Java, or Python. A minimum of 12 years of experience in commercial software development and at least 3 years of experience managing engineering teams are essential.

Proven expertise in designing, building, shipping, and operating large-scale, reliable distributed systems is required. Experience with cloud-native technologies, microservices, Kubernetes, and containers is a must. Familiarity with Azure or other major public cloud platforms is expected, with specific experience on the Azure platform and its key services being a significant advantage. A strong understanding of site reliability engineering (SRE), observability, and operational readiness practices is also necessary.

Candidates should possess a solid grasp of networking fundamentals, with data center networking experience being a plus. Knowledge of security and compliance requirements for public cloud services is important. Excellent problem-solving, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills, with a demonstrated ability to influence and drive results, are critical for success in this role. An advanced technical degree (MS/PhD) is considered a valuable asset.

Successful candidates must meet Microsoft's security screening requirements, including the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire and every two years thereafter. This position is open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on a rolling basis until the role is filled. Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion.