Principal Software Engineer - Red Team

Overview

The Cloud & AI organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. Microsoft is one of the largest enterprise service companies in the world.

 

The ‘Microsoft Red Team Engineering’ team develops red team tools for use by human operators. We also build AI red team services that automate those same tools for security defenders.  We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer interested in building AI capabilities that automate end-to-end red team engagements; advancing state of the art use of generative AI and agentic systems, developing and leveraging their understanding of attacker Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, building novel yet robust online services, and learning from some of the most experienced offensive tool developers in the industry. In this role, you’ll help build cutting edge capabilities designed to scale red team insights to stakeholders across Microsoft. Our engineers come from diverse backgrounds, are passionate about our products, and grounded in our customers’ needs. Our team values thoughtful engineering, the ability to develop relationships with your peers and partners, and the ability to focus on the outcomes that matter.

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

• Design, implement, and support AI-driven red team services using generative as well as traditional AI techniques
• Research, experiment with, and productionize frontier AI capabilities and design patterns
• Research the latest attack techniques used by internal red teams and external threat actors
• Contribute to red team tools for use by both human operators and AI red teaming services
• Support partner development teams in contributing to our services and tools
• Partner with internal defensive security teams to improve their detection, investigation, and response capabilities
• Build strong relationships with your peers through design, code reviews, and mentoring.

Qualifications

Required 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 background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Expertise in red teaming, adversarial testing, and offensive security—including threat emulation, vulnerability discovery, and ethical hacking.
• Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs) and agentic AI systems.
• Strong background in system design and cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP).
• 8 years of professional software development experience in an OOL such as C# or Java and Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related fields, or equivalent experience

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $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.