Senior Software Engineer - Search

As a Senior Software Engineer within the Windows Search Platform Engineering team, you will be responsible for: Designing and implementing core components of the Windows Search Platform. Driving technical deep-dives and authoring design specifications for complex features, establishing yourself as a technical authority on the search platform stack. Owning end-to-end delivery of features from design through coding, testing, self-host validation, and retail rollout — with a strong focus on quality, reliability, and performance. Collaborating cross-functionally with Products and Data teams to drive technical alignment and resolve architectural trade-offs. Building and maintaining observability infrastructure. Driving Reliability and Quality through bug triage leadership, root-cause analysis, and proactive quality engineering. Contributing to release. Mentoring junior engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and technical guidance — raising the overall engineering bar across the team. Championing AI-assisted engineering practices — leveraging agentic workflows, automation, and AI tooling to accelerate development and improve code quality. Proactively identifying technical debt, performance bottlenecks, and reliability risks — proposing and executing improvements with minimal oversight. Representing technical decisions and progress in engineering forums, sprint reviews, and cross-team syncs with clarity and confidence. 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. Solid proficiency in C/C++ with experience in systems-level or platform software development. Experience with multi-threaded programming, memory management, and performance optimization in native code. Demonstrated ability to own and deliver complex features end-to-end with minimal guidance. Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 7+ years technical engineering experience. OR Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years technical engineering experience. OR equivalent experience. Deep understanding of Windows internals, NT kernel, file systems (NTFS/ReFS), or OS-level services and infrastructure. Experience with search/indexing systems, database internals, query processing, or information retrieval at scale. Track record of authoring design specifications and driving technical consensus across multiple stakeholders. Experience with telemetry frameworks, observability pipelines, and data-driven quality engineering. Familiarity with AI/ML integration patterns — embedding-based retrieval, LLM consumption APIs, or AI-native platform design.