Join the Windows + Devices Fundamentals team and play a pivotal role in enhancing the reliability, performance, and overall health of Windows devices. This team is instrumental in building and operating sophisticated services, telemetry systems, and data pipelines that translate complex signals into actionable insights for engineering improvements. We are seeking an experienced Principal Software Engineering Manager to lead a dedicated organization focused on critical Windows Fundamentals data and service capabilities. This leadership position offers the opportunity to shape strategic direction and drive innovation across backend services, telemetry platforms, data pipelines, metrics, and diagnostic workflows. You will be responsible for cultivating senior technical and management talent, fostering coordinated execution to significantly improve Windows health at scale, and contributing to Microsoft's mission of empowering every person and organization to achieve more.

Define the strategic vision, portfolio, and multi-year roadmap for Windows Fundamentals backend services, telemetry systems, data pipelines, metrics, and diagnostic capabilities. Guide architectural development and execution for scalable systems, covering telemetry ingestion, transformation, orchestration, storage, health monitoring, analytics, diagnostics, and automated engineering workflows. Establish organization-wide standards for service reliability, security, compliance, privacy, observability, data quality, schema evolution, deployment safety, live-site response, and operational excellence. Lead the organization in leveraging large-scale telemetry, statistical methods, experimentation, and systems debugging to identify systemic opportunities, understand product-health trends, and drive prioritized engineering actions across Windows. Drive architectural simplification, automation, AI-assisted analysis, and self-service capabilities to proactively detect issues and increase engineering leverage across multiple teams. Utilize data, customer insights, and business priorities to make informed portfolio tradeoffs, sequence investments, manage technical and operational risk, and hold teams accountable for measurable outcomes. Build and develop a high-performing, inclusive engineering organization by hiring, coaching, and developing managers, principal engineers, and technical leaders, establishing succession plans, and fostering a culture of technical excellence and operational accountability. Create strong alignment across Windows engineering, data science, security, silicon, OEM, and service organizations, resolving cross-team dependencies and influencing architecture, product direction, and investment decisions with senior leaders.

A minimum of 12 years of software engineering experience is required, along with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline. Equivalent practical experience will be considered in lieu of a degree. At least three years of people-management experience, including developing managers or senior technical leaders, is essential. Candidates should possess extensive experience leading the architecture, development, deployment, and operation of backend services, distributed systems, data pipelines, telemetry platforms, large-scale analytics, or engineering infrastructure. Demonstrated success in building high-performing teams and leading complex, multi-team initiatives that delivered highly reliable production systems or platforms at scale is crucial. This role demands deep technical judgment in service architecture, systems design, data engineering, security, reliability, debugging, and engineering tradeoffs. The ability to set organizational strategy, navigate ambiguity, make data-driven portfolio decisions, manage operational and delivery risk, and influence senior technical and product leaders across organizational boundaries is paramount. Experience leading organizations responsible for cloud services, distributed systems, data engineering, telemetry platforms, developer infrastructure, or business-critical production operations is highly valued. A solid understanding of Windows Fundamentals, Windows internals, reliability engineering, performance analysis, power efficiency, or system-level diagnostics is beneficial. Experience leading secure and compliant services with robust observability, deployment controls, data-quality practices, live-site response, and operational accountability is expected. Familiarity with defining organizational metrics, cohorts, baselines, and measurement strategies using large-scale telemetry, experimentation, statistical analysis, or Azure data platforms is required. A proven track record of shaping architecture and product strategy, applying automation or AI to engineering workflows, developing senior leaders, and driving execution with executive and senior technical stakeholders is a significant advantage.