Microsoft Commerce powers the business engine behind Microsoft’s global ecosystem, enabling the monetization of products and services that reach hundreds of millions of customers worldwide. Every Azure workload, Microsoft 365 subscription, Copilot seat, marketplace transaction, consumption-based service, enterprise agreement, and emerging AI offering relies on Commerce platforms operating at massive scale.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will work at the intersection of AI, cloud computing, distributed systems, large-scale commerce platforms, and business transformation. You will help define the next generation of intelligent commerce capabilities that enable Microsoft to innovate faster, launch new business models, support AI-native products, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Commerce sits at the center of Microsoft's future growth strategy, supporting increasingly complex monetization models, AI-powered offerings, consumption-based experiences, ecosystem partnerships, and global compliance requirements. This platform is central to Microsoft's ability to commercialize innovation at worldwide scale.
You will have a unique opportunity to shape how AI transforms Commerce, helping Microsoft evolve into an AI-first enterprise where intelligent systems, agents, automation, and human expertise work together to accelerate innovation and deliver measurable business value.
What You'll Do
Architect and Build Next-Generation Commerce Platforms
Lead the architecture, design, and implementation of highly scalable, secure, and resilient distributed systems.
Drive technical strategy across multiple services, domains, and engineering teams.
Design cloud-native solutions capable of handling mission-critical workloads at Microsoft scale.
Demonstrated ability to work across the entire technology stack.
Experience building modern web applications and services.
Knowledge of frontend frameworks such as React, Angular, or equivalent.
Strong backend, API, platform, and data engineering skills.
Artificial Intelligence
The ideal candidate should possess deep technical understanding of:
Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs)
Agentic AI systems
RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)
Prompt engineering
AI observability and evaluation frameworks
AI safety and governance
AI orchestration platforms
Vector search technologies
AI-assisted software development workflows
Human-in-the-loop AI architectures
Preferred Qualifications
Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or related discipline.
Experience building AI-first products in production environments.
Experience in commerce, billing, marketplaces, subscriptions, consumption-based platforms, pricing systems, or financial systems.
Contributions to significant open-source initiatives.
Publications, patents, or recognized technical thought leadership.
Experience working across geographically distributed engineering teams.
What Makes You Successful
You are:
A systems thinker who sees connections across products, platforms, customers, and business strategy.
Passionate about engineering quality and operational excellence.
Obsessed with customer impact.
Comfortable navigating ambiguity and defining direction.
Able to influence without authority across organizational boundaries.
Continuously learning and adopting emerging technologies.
Excited by the opportunity to use AI as a force multiplier for innovation and engineering effectiveness.
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Impact You'll Have
In this role, you will help define how Microsoft commercializes the next generation of products and AI-powered services. You will influence systems that support billions of dollars in business, power global customer experiences, and enable entirely new business models.
You will help build the intelligent commerce platform that enables Microsoft's AI transformation journey, driving innovation across pricing, monetization, fulfillment, business planning, analytics, and customer engagement. Working at the intersection of Commerce and AI provides a rare opportunity to shape the future of one of Microsoft's most critical strategic platforms and contribute directly to the company's long-term growth and transformation.
Microsoft Culture
We embrace a growth mindset, foster innovation, prioritize inclusion, and empower every engineer to have outsized impact. We are looking for exceptional technical leaders who are passionate about solving hard problems, raising the engineering bar, and helping define the future of AI-powered commerce.
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.
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