What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Software Engineer - Copilot Security position at Microsoft AI?
Overview
Copilot Security is at the core of Microsoft’s mission to deliver trusted, human-centered AI experiences. We make security and resilience intrinsic to every Copilot interaction—across devices, platforms, and ecosystems. Our work spans secure identity flows, defenses against emerging threats like prompt injection, and privacy-first systems that scale globally.
About The Role
Copilot for consumers is entering a new era of agentic AI, where intelligent agents act on behalf of users across Windows, Edge, web, mobile, and third-party products. We’re seeking a Principal Software Engineer to contribute to the development of security features and solutions that harness agentic AI to protect customers and enable new capabilities in Copilot. You’ll design, build, and ship AI-powered defenses, secure orchestration frameworks, and enabling technologies that empower Copilot to act safely and responsibly at scale. This role requires solid engineering skills, creativity in applying agentic AI to security challenges, and a passion for building systems that balance innovation with trust.
Why This Role Matters
Your work will directly shape how hundreds of millions of users experience safe, trustworthy, and innovative AI. You’ll be at the forefront of defining how agentic AI can proactively defend users, mitigate emerging threats, and unlock new secure scenarios—making a global impact on Microsoft’s most transformative products.
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.
Starting January 26, 2026, Microsoft AI (MAI) employees who live within a 50- mile commute of a designated Microsoft office in the U.S. or 25-mile commute of a non-U.S., country-specific location are expected to work from the office at least four days per week. This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction.
Responsibilities
Required Qualifications:
Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $163,000 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 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.
Copilot Security is at the core of Microsoft’s mission to deliver trusted, human-centered AI experiences. We make security and resilience intrinsic to every Copilot interaction—across devices, platforms, and ecosystems. Our work spans secure identity flows, defenses against emerging threats like prompt injection, and privacy-first systems that scale globally.
About The Role
Copilot for consumers is entering a new era of agentic AI, where intelligent agents act on behalf of users across Windows, Edge, web, mobile, and third-party products. We’re seeking a Principal Software Engineer to contribute to the development of security features and solutions that harness agentic AI to protect customers and enable new capabilities in Copilot. You’ll design, build, and ship AI-powered defenses, secure orchestration frameworks, and enabling technologies that empower Copilot to act safely and responsibly at scale. This role requires solid engineering skills, creativity in applying agentic AI to security challenges, and a passion for building systems that balance innovation with trust.
Why This Role Matters
Your work will directly shape how hundreds of millions of users experience safe, trustworthy, and innovative AI. You’ll be at the forefront of defining how agentic AI can proactively defend users, mitigate emerging threats, and unlock new secure scenarios—making a global impact on Microsoft’s most transformative products.
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.
Starting January 26, 2026, Microsoft AI (MAI) employees who live within a 50- mile commute of a designated Microsoft office in the U.S. or 25-mile commute of a non-U.S., country-specific location are expected to work from the office at least four days per week. This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction.
Responsibilities
- Develop and ship agentic AI-powered security features that protect users from threats such as prompt injection, adversarial manipulation, and abuse of agentic workflows.
- Design and implement secure orchestration frameworks that enable Copilot to safely delegate, coordinate, and execute actions across devices, services, and platforms.
- Invent and apply new intelligent agents that leverage information flow analysis and apply common sense and judgement guardrails for security and privacy.
- Collaborate with product, engineering, security, privacy, and AI teams to drive adoption of agentic security patterns and best practices across Copilot and MAI.
- Monitor key metrics for agentic AI security and innovation, using data-driven insights to improve defenses and enablement.
- Align with central Microsoft security and AI roadmaps, landing platform capabilities in Copilot and MAI consumer scenarios.
- Document secure agentic AI patterns, ensuring they address novel risks, support safe delegation, and enable responsible orchestration of actions.
Required Qualifications:
- 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, Go, or Python
- OR equivalent experience.
- 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 Python
- OR 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 Python
- OR equivalent experience.
- 8 years in technical engineering roles building large-scale services.
- 8 years hands-on experience designing and operating security-critical or AI-powered systems at scale, including agentic AI, secure orchestration, or advanced threat defenses.
- Proven ability to design, build, and ship agentic AI features or frameworks.
- Ability to clearly explain complex systems and security concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders and influence cross-org roadmaps.
- Experience building production agent systems using frameworks such as LangGraph, Amazon Strands SDK, or similar platforms; familiarity with agentic design patterns including tool calling, multi-agent coordination, and secure delegation patterns.
- Hands-on experience with distributed training frameworks (Ray, Slurm, HPC), containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) for ML model deployment, and ML lifecycle management in production environments.
- Experience designing evaluation frameworks for LLM-based applications and implementing observability for agent systems using tools such as Phoenix, MLFlow, LangFuse, or custom eval harnesses; understanding of AI safety evaluation methodologies including adversarial testing and red-teaming.
- Experience integrating with Azure AI services, Azure OpenAI Service, or Microsoft security platforms (Azure AD, Defender, Purview).
- Track record of mentoring engineers, driving adoption of secure agentic AI standards across product teams, and influencing technical roadmaps while balancing innovation velocity with fundamentals.
Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $163,000 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 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.
Salary : $163,000 - $331,200