Principal AI Engineering Manager
 Microsoft | |
 United States, Washington, Redmond | |
 Sep 21, 2025 | |
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OverviewSecurity 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 just 18 months, we've driven the science behind Microsoft Security Copilot and delivered foundational and specialized models. We take ideas from zero-to-one (01) prototypes to Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), and then scale them one-to-many (1N) across Microsoft Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Intune, and Purview. We are seeking a Principal AI Engineering Manager to lead and grow a high-impact team focused on building AI-first security experiences and platform capabilities. You will define the multi-year strategy, guide technical execution, and foster a culture of innovation, velocity, and quality. You will orchestrate cross-discipline, cross-organization teams to deliver responsible, high-quality AI features and initiatives end to end, while engaging engage directly with customers and stakeholders to drive adoption and impact. 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.
ResponsibilitiesStrategic Leadership: Define and drive the technical vision, strategy, and roadmap for AI-native security incubation initiatives. Align stakeholders across Security Copilot, Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Purview, Azure AI Foundry, and Microsoft AI to deliver cohesive customer value.Team Building & Management: Build and lead a high-performing engineering team. Mentor and grow talent, foster a builder culture, and create an inclusive environment that encourages innovation and excellence.End-to-End Execution: Lead zero-to-one (01) incubation through MVP and private preview, then drive one-to-many (1N) platformization and scale to GA. Make principled tradeoffs across quality, latency, reliability, cost, and safety.Technical Oversight: Provide hands-on technical guidance, review designs, code implementation and PRs, define APIs/data contracts, architect scalable systems, and establish evaluation frameworks to de-risk complex systems.AI Strategy & Architecture: Set direction for AI-native security experiences and platform components, LLMs vs classical ML, RAG design, grounding, model routing/fallbacks, and safety guardrails to meet customer outcomes and SLOs.Responsible AI & Compliance: Ensure privacy, security, and Responsible AI guardrails are designed in from day one. Coordinate safety reviews, abuse prevention, compliance, and incident readiness.Partner and Customer Engagement: Engage directly with technical product partners and their customers to co-design solutions, land adoption, and iterate based on feedback and telemetry. Communicate program status and strategy to executives with hands-on demos. | |