Principal AI Architect and Security Strategist

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 Microsoft's 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.

NEXT is the incubation and research arm of Microsoft Security AI (MSECAI), building the next generation of AI-native security products. In the 18 months since our founding, we've driven the science behind Microsoft Security Copilot and delivered both foundational and specialized models. We pursue long-horizon bets while landing near-term impact, taking ideas from zero-to-one (01) prototypes to Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and then one-to-many (1N) platform integrations across Microsoft Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Intune, and Purview. Our culture blends ambition and scientific rigor with curiosity, humility, and customer obsession; we invest in new knowledge, collaborate across world-class scientists and engineers, and tackle the immense challenge of protecting millions of customers. We are looking for a Principal AI Architect and Security Strategist to join our team. In this role, you will combine deep industry experience in AI and security to set the multi-year product vision, technical strategy, and architecture for AI-first security solutions. You will lead zero-to-one (01) incubation and one-to-many (1N) scale-out, provide hands-on technical leadership across architecture, data, and model layers, and orchestrate cross-discipline teams to deliver responsible, high-quality AI features end-to-end. You are a builder who rapidly prototypes code to de-risk ideas, navigate ambiguity, and drive clarity and results across organizations. You are a presenter who commands your audience to demonstrate amazing ideas from both you and the team. You are a diplomat and thought leader - skilled at aligning diverse stakeholders across research, engineering, and product teams, negotiating priorities to ensure a cohesive strategy - and you are recognized in the industry for your expertise in AI and security.

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 the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for AI-native security incubation initiatives; align stakeholders across Security Copilot, Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Purview, Azure AI and other groups to deliver cohesive customer value, acting as a diplomat to negotiate priorities and trade-offs among partner teams.
• Lead 01 incubation R\&D through MVP and private preview, then drive 1N platformization and scale to General Availability (GA); make principled trade-offs across quality, latency, reliability, cost, and safety when delivering solutions.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership - prototype in code, review designs and Pull Requests (PRs), define APIs/data contracts, build well-architected systems, and establish evaluation frameworks to de-risk complex AI systems.
• Set strategy for AI-first security experiences and platform components - determine where to use Large Language Models (LLMs) versus classical Machine Learning, design retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, implement grounding and model routing/fallbacks, and establish safety guardrails to meet customer outcomes and Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
• Ensure a security-centric and Responsible AI approach - design privacy and security guardrails from day one, coordinate security/privacy reviews, abuse prevention, compliance checks, and incident readiness as integral parts of the development process.
• Lead virtual teams (v-teams) and mentor others to cultivate a high-velocity, high-quality engineering culture.
• Engage directly with enterprise customers and field teams to co-design solutions and drive adoption, and communicate program status and strategy to executives through compelling, hands-on demonstrations.

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, 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 background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in languages including but not limited to C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR Bachelor's Degree in a related field AND 12+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in the above languages OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of experience driving complex, cross-functional initiatives; experience leading without authority across multiple teams.
• 3+ years working with Machine Learning/AI systems (e.g., Large Language Models, Generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, model serving, experimentation platforms, data pipelines), including establishing evaluation metrics and improving model quality.
• Program leadership and communication skills with exceptional stakeholder management; proven ability to diplomatically influence technical and product leaders and drive data-informed decisions across organizations.
• Proven track record of shipping cloud-based AI or security services or platforms at scale (multi-tenant, high-throughput) with measurable customer and business impact.
• Security domain expertise (e.g., threat detection/response, SIEM/SOAR, identity, endpoint, or cloud security) and familiarity with analyst workflows.
• Experience with GenAI/LLM techniques and tooling - e.g., prompt engineering, retrieval/vector stores, agents or tool integration, content safety and guardrails, offline/online evaluation frameworks, vibe coding.
• Hands-on coding ability in one or more languages (e.g., Python, C#, C++, Rust, JavaScript/TypeScript); comfortable prototyping, reviewing code (PRs), and diving deep into technical design discussions.
• Demonstrated success driving 01 initiatives from ambiguity to MVP to GA, and then leading 1N platform adoption across multiple product teams.
• Industry thought leadership with deep industry clout in AI and/or security - recognized for contributions such as patents, published papers, talks at conferences, or community leadership.

#MSFTSecurity #MSECAI #AI #SecurityAI #GenerativeAI #Cybersecurity #ResponsibleAI #Azure

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.