Sr. Software Engineer - CTJ - Secret

About the role

Step into the future of connectivity with the Microsoft 365 Substrate First Mile Networking team, where bold innovation meets massive scale. We shape the networking infrastructure that fuels Substrate and COSMIC—critical platforms behind Microsoft's most impactful productivity experiences like Copilot, Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint. We tackle some of the most complex distributed systems challenges in the industry, driving performance, reliability, and intelligence across global networks. With millions of users depending on our solutions daily, our contributions resonate across the entire Microsoft ecosystem. As a Sr. Software Engineer in the Microsoft 365 Substrate First Mile Networking team, you will design and implement scalable networking solutions for the Microsoft 365 Substrate and the COSMIC (container-based) platforms. Our product offerings extend to sovereign cloud environments, and your clearance will allow you to work in specialized environments focused on the unique needs of a critical customer base. You will design and optimize first-mile connectivity systems to ensure low-latency, high-reliability access to productivity services. Additionally, you will analyze production service telemetry to identify and implement continuous improvements. This opportunity will allow you to work on foundational infrastructure that powers Microsoft's most critical services. It will provide an opportunity to solve real-world problems at massive scale with global impact, on a team that values innovation, autonomy, and technical depth.

Responsibilities

• Collaborates with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for a scenario.
• Drives identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
• Creates, implements, optimizes, debugs, refactors, and reuses code to establish and improve performance and maintainability, effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI).
• Leverages subject-matter expertise of product features and partners with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive a workgroup's project plans, release plans, and work items.
• Acts as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) and guides other engineers by developing and following the playbook, working on call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions, alerting stakeholders about status and initiates actions to restore system/product/service for simple and complex problems when appropriate.
• Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale.

Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
• Active U.S. Government Secret Security Clearance.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements.
• Verification of U.S. citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions (verified via valid passport, other approved documents, or verified U.S. government clearance).
• Must pass Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred:

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
• Understanding of networking technologies, protocols, and concepts such as TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing, and service mesh architectures.
• Understanding of network security technologies such as firewalls, DDoS mitigation tools, and proxies.
• Expertise with Linux networking and/or container networking technologies such as Cilium.
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred) and microservices.
• Proven ability to work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

Pay

• Typical base pay range across the U.S.: USD $119,800 - $234,700 per year.
• San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area: USD $160,200 - $261,000 per year.
• Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.