Principal Software Engineering Manager - Microsoft Red Team

Overview

The CISO organization represents the voice of the customer and the executive security buyer, focusing on enterprise security strategy, risk posture, and real-world security needs across industries. This team partners closely with product and engineering to ensure Microsoft Security solutions align with how organizations actually defend against threats, translating complex security challenges into actionable priorities and influencing how security is delivered at scale. It plays a critical role in shaping end-to-end security narratives, aligning product capabilities with customer outcomes, and driving trust with executives making high-stakes security decisions.

The Microsoft Red Team attacks ALL Microsoft services, continually – identifying critical, systemic risks, demonstrating authentic attack chains and techniques, and working with engineering teams, investigators, and incident responders to continuously improve their ability to protect, detect, investigate, and respond to real attacks.

Within Microsoft Red Team Engineering, the Intelligence team builds the reconnaissance, data, and attack-graph capabilities that allow operators and autonomous agents to understand complex environments before an operation begins. The team brings together signals from across Microsoft and external environments, models identities, assets, relationships, exposures, and likely attack paths, and turns fragmented data into actionable intelligence packages that accelerate red team operations. Its work forms the intelligence layer of MRT's broader AI-driven adversary emulation platform, enabling operations to move from initial discovery to high-confidence attack planning at Microsoft scale.

As a Principal Software Engineering Manager in Microsoft Red Team Intelligence, you will lead and grow the engineering team responsible for this foundational intelligence platform. You will own the technical strategy and delivery of services and skills used by human operators and agentic systems. You will work closely with red team operators, security researchers, data scientists, and engineering teams across geographies to ensure MRT can rapidly understand an environment, identify the attack paths that matter most, and act on them before real adversaries do. "

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.

Responsibilities

• Lead, grow, and coach a team of software engineers, building an inclusive, high-trust culture where people do the most outstanding work of their careers.

• Own the technical strategy, roadmap, and execution for the intelligence pillar within Microsoft Red Team engineering, and expand the team's charter into new offensive capability areas as opportunities emerge.

• Drive the design and delivery of AI-driven services that leverage LLMs and autonomous agents to find critical attack paths across Microsoft's estate at scale.

• Deliver intelligence packages and product experiences that help human red team operators quickly understand target environments, plan operations, and select the highest-impact techniques.

• Contribute engineering leadership to the broader AI-driven adversary emulation platform, partnering with peer engineering teams globally on architecture and shared components.

• Partner closely with red team operators, security researchers, product management, and engineering leaders globally to align investments with the highest-impact attack paths.

• Hire, develop, and retain engineers; set clear expectations, give candid feedback, and grow the next generation of technical leaders on the team.

• Drive engineering excellence across the team – design reviews, code quality, secure development practices, live-site health, and continuous improvement.

• Ensure Microsoft continues to improve security through authentic red team attacks.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 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.

Other Requirements:

• 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 Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with offensive security – red teaming, penetration testing, malware/tooling development, or offensive cyber operations.

• Experience with applications that leverage LLMs or autonomous agents – whether hands-on or through leading teams that build them (agentic architectures, prompt engineering, evaluation, or integrating generative AI into production or research systems).

• Experience leading teams through growth or charter expansion, and developing engineers into senior and principal contributors.

• Familiarity with the modern attacker kill chain, MITRE ATT&CK, and adversary tradecraft against cloud and AI environments.

• 10+ years of professional hands-on software development experience, with a track record of shipping and operating production systems.

• 3+ years of people management experience leading software engineering teams, including hiring, coaching, and performance management.]

• Experience building software in the cybersecurity domain – e.g., red team / offensive tooling, endpoint or cloud security products, detection and response, threat protection, or closely adjacent security engineering.

• Demonstrated ability to set direction in ambiguous, unsolved problem spaces and translate strategy into execution that delivers measurable impact.

• Excellent cross-functional and cross-geo collaboration skills; ability to influence without authority across operators, researchers, and partner engineering teams.

Software Engineering M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $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. (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html)