Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be and take their careers further. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness, and the sky is the limit thinking in a cloud-enabled world.

Microsoft’s Azure Data engineering team is leading the transformation of analytics in the world of data with products like databases, data integration, big data analytics, messaging & real-time analytics, and business intelligence. The products our portfolio include Microsoft Fabric, Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos Database, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, and Power BI. Our mission is to build the data platform for the age of AI, powering a new class of data-first applications and driving a data culture.

Within Azure Data, the databases team builds and maintains Microsoft's operational Database systems. We store and manage data in a structured way to enable multitude of applications across various industries. We are on a journey to enable developer friendly, mission-critical, AI enabled operational Databases across relational, non-relational and open source software (OSS) offerings.

We are hiring a **Principal Software Engineer** to join the Azure Data engineering team. Vector search (or nearest neighbor search) is a foundational component for semantic search and retrieval-augmentation in copilots and generative AI workflows. Azure Data is developing state-of-the-art vector indexing and search services in its databases. You would architect and developing vector indexing libraries with immediate and wide-reaching impact for the company. You will be part of a cross-org team and lead by example.

The DiskANN project developed the first high performance disk-based vector search, the first streaming graph indexing algorithms among other industry-leading ideas.

The group fosters a diverse and inclusive work culture that prioritizes people at all times. We spend our days collaborating with, teaching, and learning from a diverse set of world class engineers. We develop, test, and check code in every day. We do not just value differences or different perspectives, we seek them out and invite them in so we can tap into the collective power of everyone in the company. As a result, our customers are better served.

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.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

**Responsibilities**

+ Leads by example and mentors others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across the company.

+ Leads efforts to optimize, debug, refactor, and reuse code to improve performance and maintainability, effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI). Identifies best practices and coding patterns and provides deep expertise in the coding and validation strategy. Creates and applies metrics to drive the quality and stability of code, as well as appropriate coding patterns and best practices.

+ Provides technical leadership during code reviews for a solution/product area to assure it meets the team's and Microsoft’s quality standards, is reliable and accurate, and is appropriate for the scale of the product feature. Ensures coding standards are followed. Screens for and establishes best practices in reviews and provides feedback on code to drive adherence to best practices.

+ Partners with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project manager, technical lead) to determine user requirements for one or more complex scenarios. Leverages a variety of feedback channels to incorporate insights into future designs or solution fixes. Leads incorporation of appropriate continuous feedback loops measuring customer value, usage patterns, and other actionable metrics of value. Determines additional critical metrics.

+ Provides technical leadership in efforts to collect, classify, and analyze complex data and analyses on a range of metrics (e.g., health of the system, where bugs might be occurring).

+ Shares and teaches others best practices about new tools and strategies. Leads efforts and mentors others to build software developer tools to support other programs and applications to create, debug, and maintain code across products. Uses open source when possible. Holds subject matter expertise in other tools inside and outside areas of expertise. Leads identification of internal tools and creation of new tools that will be useful for creating the product, determining if methods are still applicable for the current solution. Shares best practices and teaches others about new tools and strategies.

+ Embody our culture (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/culture) and values (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/about/corporate-values) .

**Qualifications**

**Required/Minimum Qualifications**

+ Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Pythono OR equivalent experience.

+ 3+ years of experience developing and maintaining high-performance libraries or software involving concurrency, storage systems or databases.

+ 2+ years experience with leading large engineering teams as a technical lead.

**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/Additional Qualifications**

+ Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Pythono OR Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Pythono OR equivalent experience.

+ 4+ years experience with non-relational Databases like (any one of Cosmos Database, Mongo Database, Dynamo Database etc..).

+ 4+ years experience working on large-scale cloud applications and designing and building large-scale distributed systems.

+ 2+ years experience with open source development.

+ Experience with vector search algorithms or databases.

Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $158,500 - $276,600 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 $202,800 - $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

\#azdat #azuredata #vectordb #anns #rag #vectorsearch #genai

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .