Software Engineer II

We are looking for a Software Engineer II to join the Special Projects and Resources Team (SPARTANs) in M365 Core – Substrate. SPARTANs take on strategic projects and difficult engineering problems across M365 Core, removing agility, modernization, AI Acceleration barriers for engineers throughout Substrate.

Substrate is the data and intelligence platform that underpins Microsoft 365. It enables partner teams to build, operate, and modernize compliant and reliable services at global scale. SPARTANs help the organization move faster and deliver greater impact by establishing outcome-oriented missions that unblock critical programs in areas such as modernization, resilience, cost optimization, compliance, and developer productivity.

As a Software Engineer II on SPARTANs, you will work across different services and codebases to solve clearly scoped portions of complex engineering problems. You will collaborate with experienced engineers and partner teams to understand unfamiliar systems, develop and validate solutions, and deliver measurable improvements. This role offers an opportunity to strengthen your distributed-systems expertise while contributing to high-impact projects across Microsoft 365.

Our team is dedicated to serving others and leaving every system and engineering organization stronger than we found it. We value technical curiosity, sound engineering judgment, collaboration, continuous learning, and measurable customer impact.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We work with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. We build on the values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive.

• Ramp up on unfamiliar services and codebases, building an understanding of their architecture, dependencies, and operational characteristics.

• Work with senior engineers and partner teams to turn open-ended engineering problems into scoped deliverables with clear success criteria.

• Design, implement, test, and deploy software that advances SPARTANs missions in modernization, resilience, cost optimization, compliance, and developer productivity.

• Own features and technical deliverables from design through deployment, validation, and measurement of impact.

• Diagnose and address performance, latency, scalability, reliability, and cost issues in distributed services.

• Use telemetry, profiling, debugging, and experimentation to form hypotheses and make evidence-based engineering decisions.

• Write clean, secure, testable, and observable code using languages such as C#, Java, C++, Rust, or other appropriate technologies.

• Collaborate with teams across repository, service, and organizational boundaries to coordinate dependencies and land changes safely.

• Communicate technical progress, risks, decisions, and tradeoffs clearly to engineering partners and stakeholders.

• Apply a growth mindset by seeking feedback, learning from production issues, and sharing knowledge with the broader engineering community.

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 2+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.

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.