Principal Software Engineering Lead - Xbox

Come help build the next evolution in Xbox Game Compatibility. Join the Xbox Platform team and leverage your system engineering experience to advance the future of Game Preservation. As a Principal Software Engineering Lead, your work will help identify and outline the specific requirements and technical boundaries for preserving game content, build scalable emulation solutions, and ensure a fun gameplay experience for all players. Our technology solutions are a critical part of enabling the Xbox goal of allowing players to continue to enjoy their games across devices.

As the GPU Team Lead on our team you will help drive the technical strategy, architectural direction, and execution quality for graphics and GPUrelated systems within the Xbox Game Preservation organization. This role combines deep technical expertise across the graphics stack with strong engineering leadership, enabling the team to deliver compatibility, rendering correctness, and highperformance GPU behavior across all Xbox endpoints.

You will guide a team of engineers working on GPU emulation, command buffer translation, shader compilation, graphics debugging, and performance tuning across multiple hardware generations. You will partner closely with hardware vendors, platform teams, and other internal/external partners to ensure that future graphics systems remain robust, scalable, and aligned with longterm product goals.

Technical Leadership

• Help define the architectural vision for GPU emulation subsystem
• Lead investigations into GPU correctness issues, rendering anomalies, performance regressions, and hardwarespecific behaviors
• Oversee development and growth of GPU engineers
• Ensure systemlevel compatibility across all new and existing Xbox hardware endpoints

Execution & Delivery

• Drive roadmap planning, prioritization, and execution across GPU workstreams
• Enforce engineering excellence: code quality, regression prevention, performance validation, reliability, and telemetrydriven improvements
• Coordinate crossteam dependencies with Platform OS, Silicon design, and graphics pipeline teams to maintain execution velocity
• Influence longterm hardware and systemsoftware direction by representing engineering needs and ecosystem constraints

Team Leadership & Mentoring

• Mentor engineers in graphics debugging, lowlevel GPU feature implementation, compiler pipelines, and hardwareaware performance engineering
• Unblock the team technically by providing expertise that accelerates problem resolution
• Cultivate a healthy engineering culture of learning, feedback, inclusion, and technical excellence

Required Qualification:

• Bachelor'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 equivalent experience

PreferredQualifications:

• 5+ years lead/people management experience in performancecritical systems, graphics engineering, or GPU subsystem development
• Deep understanding of GPU architecture, shader execution, memory models, and command submission behavior
• Demonstrated architectural leadership on complex systems with high performance and correctness requirements
• Prior experience shipping GPU or graphics subsystem technology in a production environment
• Experience guiding crossdiscipline engineering teams and aligning technical direction across organizations
• Experience collaborating directly with hardware vendors (AMD, NVIDIA) on architecture, drivers, or validation workflows
• Experience shipping games on Xbox and PC endpoints

Software Engineering M5 - 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.

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.