Principal Software Engineering Manager

Overview
Security 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 Microsofts 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.
Help shape the future of cloud data governance and privacy. Microsoft runs industry-leading privacy and governance programs that meet global regulations, including GDPR, CCPA, the EU AI Act, and more. Were seeking an experienced Principal Software Engineering Manager to join Microsoft Security Trusts 1P Data Privacy and Governance team. Youll lead a team that builds and scales privacy and governance capabilities for Microsoft first-party (internal) data and services—partnering across engineering, security, legal, compliance, and product groups. Youll help drive the Microsoft Privacy corporate control program by translating policy and regulatory requirements into reliable engineering solutions and measurable controls. Your work will enable product teams to discover, classify, protect, retain, and delete data appropriately—improving customer trust while meeting our compliance obligations.
Microsofts 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.
Responsibilities

• Build, coach, and retain a high-performing engineering team (hiring, performance, and career growth) and set a culture of quality, inclusion, and operational excellence.
• Own end-to-end delivery of privacy and data-governance platform capabilities (e.g., data discovery and inventory, classification/labeling, policy enforcement, retention/deletion, access governance, and audit evidence).
• Translate regulatory, policy, and risk requirements into engineering roadmaps, clear problem statements, and measurable success metrics that balance speed with trust, safety, and compliance.
• Partner closely with security, legal, compliance, privacy, and product teams to design solutions that are production-ready, scalable, and repeatable—not one-off processes.

• Drive execution across multiple systems and teams in a highly matrixed environment, influencing roadmaps and priorities without direct authority.
• Establish strong engineering practices for reliability, security, privacy, and incident response; define SLOs, telemetry, and operational mechanisms to keep services healthy.
• Use data and customer feedback to evaluate impact, close control gaps, and continuously improve privacy and governance outcomes across Microsoft
  

Qualifications

• Bachelors Degree AND 15+ years of experience in software engineering, including 6+ years leading engineering teams.
• Experience building and operating distributed systems or platform services, including on-call/operational ownership.
• Experience partnering with security, privacy, and/or compliance stakeholders in regulated or risk-managed environments.
• Experience building and shipping privacy, security, or governance platforms (e.g., data inventory/classification, retention/deletion, access governance, DSR/subject-rights workflows, or policy enforcement services).

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• Demonstrated ability to automate controls and evidence collection for audit readiness, and to partner effectively through assessments and compliance reviews.
• Proven experience working across multiple teams and systems to deliver outcomes in complex, highly matrixed organizations.
• Ability to lead ambiguous problem spaces, turning strategy and research into concrete, actionable product and engineering investments.
• Strong technical judgment and architecture skills across cloud services, data systems, and security fundamentals (identity, access, encryption, logging, and least privilege).
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to align diverse partners around shared goals, tradeoffs, and success metrics.
• Familiarity with privacy engineering concepts and global regulatory drivers (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) and how they map to technical controls and product requirements.
  

#MSFTSecurity
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.
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.