New 
Principal AI Engineer
 Microsoft | |
 United States, Washington, Redmond | |
 Sep 05, 2025 | |
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OverviewSecurity represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security 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. NEXT is the incubation and research arm of Microsoft Security AI (MSECAI), building the next generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-native security products. In the 18 months since our founding, we've driven the science behind Microsoft Security Copilot and delivered both foundational and specialized models. We pursue long horizon bets while landing near term impact, taking ideas from zero-to-one (01) prototypes to Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and then one-to-many (1N) platform integration across Microsoft Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Intune, and Purview. Our culture blends ambition and scientific rigor with curiosity, humility, and customer obsession; we invest in new knowledge, collaborate across worldclass scientists and engineers, and tackle the immense challenge of protecting millions of customers. We are looking for a Principal AI Engineer for our team. In this role, you will set the multi-year strategy and roadmap for AI-first security experiences and the underlying platform. You will lead zero-to-one (01) incubation and one-to-many (1N) scale-out, provide hands-on technical leadership across architecture, data, and model layers, and orchestrate cross-discipline teams to deliver responsible, high-quality AI features end to end. You are a builder who rapidly prototypes code to de-risk ideas, navigate ambiguity, and drive clarity and results across organizations. You are a presenter who commands your audience to demonstrate amazing ideas from both you and the team. 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.
ResponsibilitiesResponsibilities: Define the vision, strategy, and roadmap for AI-native incubation initiatives; align stakeholders across Security Copilot, Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Purview, Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft AI to deliver cohesive customer value.Lead zero-to-one (01) incubation R&D through MVP and private preview, then drive one-to-many (1N) platformization and scale to GA; make principled tradeoffs across quality, latency, reliability, cost, and safety.Provide hands-on technical leadership: prototype in code, review designs and Pull Requests (PRs), define Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)/data contracts, build comprehensive well-architected systems, and establish evaluation frameworks to de-risk complex systems.Set strategy for AI-native security experiences and platform components: where to use Large Language Models (LLMs) versus classical Machine Learning (ML), retrieval/Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) design, grounding, model routing/fallbacks, and safety guardrails to meet customer outcomes and Service Level Objectives (SLOs).Ensure Responsible AI, privacy, and security guardrails are designed in from day one, coordinate safety reviews, abuse prevention, compliance, and incident readiness.Lead v-teams and mentor others; cultivate a builder culture of velocity and quality as a force multiplier. Engage directly with enterprise customers and field to co-design solutions and land adoption; communicate program status and strategy to executives with hands on real code demonstrations.Embody our Culture and Values | |