OverviewWe are building the next generation of Microsoft Copilot extensibility platforms that enable customers, partners, developers, and enterprises to create intelligent AI-powered experiences through Agents, MCP Servers, Actions, Connectors, Skills, Declarative Agents, Digital Workers, and emerging agent ecosystems.
Our mission is to create a secure, scalable, and enterprise-grade platform that enables intelligent agents to discover capabilities, interact with business systems, orchestrate workflows, collaborate with other agents, and deliver meaningful outcomes for millions of users worldwide.
As a Principal Group Architect, you will define the long-term technical vision and architecture for Microsoft's Copilot Extensibility and Agent Platform investments. You will work across multiple engineering organizations to shape platform strategy, drive architectural alignment, solve highly complex technical challenges, and influence how the next generation of enterprise AI systems are built.
This is a high-impact technical leadership role for an architect who combines deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and the ability to drive transformational change across large organizations.
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.
- Define and drive the multi-year technical vision, architecture strategy, and platform roadmap for Copilot Extensibility and Agent Platform capabilities.
- Lead architecture for intelligent agent ecosystems including agent orchestration, tool invocation, workflow automation, agent collaboration, extensibility frameworks, and developer platforms.
- Design highly scalable, reliable, secure, and globally distributed cloud services that support enterprise AI and agent-driven experiences.
- Drive technical direction across multiple engineering organizations and establish architectural standards, platform principles, and engineering best practices.
- Partner with Product Management, Applied Science, Security, Research, and Engineering leaders to align platform strategy with customer and business needs.
- Lead the resolution of highly ambiguous and business-critical technical challenges spanning distributed systems, AI platforms, developer ecosystems, and enterprise integrations.
- Identify platform opportunities and create reusable frameworks, SDKs, APIs, and services that accelerate innovation across multiple product teams.
- Champion operational excellence through investments in reliability, observability, scalability, security, compliance, and service resilience.
- Represent architecture and technical strategy in executive reviews, architecture boards, strategic planning discussions, and cross-company initiatives.
- Mentor Principal Engineers, Architects, and senior technical leaders while helping build the next generation of technical talent.
QualificationsRequired/Minimum 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, JavaScript, or Python.
- OR equivalent experience.
Additional or preferred qualifications
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:
- 15+ years of software engineering experience designing and delivering large-scale distributed systems, cloud platforms, or platform technologies.
- Proven experience defining architecture and technical strategy across multiple teams, organizations, or product areas.
- Deep expertise in distributed systems, software architecture, cloud-native services, microservices, APIs, platform engineering, and service reliability.
- Solid experience with enterprise-scale cloud platforms, scalability patterns, resilience engineering, observability, and operational excellence.
- Demonstrated success driving large cross-organizational technical initiatives and influencing senior engineering and business leaders.
- Solid understanding of security, privacy, compliance, identity, authentication, and platform governance principles.
- Excellent communication, technical leadership, and stakeholder management skills.
- Proven ability to lead through influence and drive alignment across complex technical organizations.
- Experience building AI platforms, Generative AI solutions, agentic systems, Copilot experiences, or intelligent automation platforms.
- Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), agent orchestration frameworks, multi-agent systems, and AI reasoning workflows.
- Experience designing developer ecosystems including extensibility platforms, SDKs, plugin architectures, APIs, or marketplace-based platforms.
- Experience with MCP, agent interoperability frameworks, enterprise integrations, workflow orchestration, or business process automation.
- Solid understanding of AI governance, evaluation systems, safety frameworks, and responsible AI practices.
- Experience operating mission-critical cloud services at global scale with demanding availability, reliability, and performance requirements.
- Recognized technical leadership through patents, publications, open-source contributions, conference presentations, or industry impact.
Success Profile
- The ideal candidate is a recognized technical leader who can define architectural direction for an entire platform ecosystem, influence strategy across multiple organizations, and solve industry-defining technical challenges.
- They possess deep expertise in distributed systems and AI platforms, demonstrate solid architectural judgment, and excel at building alignment in complex environments.
- They can translate long-term business opportunities into scalable platform investments, raise the technical bar across organizations, and create durable technology foundations that shape the future of intelligent agents and enterprise AI.
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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.