Principal Security Engineering Manager

Overview The Cloud & AI 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. Microsoft is one of the largest enterprise service companies in the world. Security represents one of the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. The Office of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is accountable for managing and prioritizing cybersecurity risk for Microsoft. This team oversees the company’s overall cyber defense, including the security of Microsoft products and business operations, and collaborates with Engineering teams to advance Secure Future Initiative (SFI) objectives. Security is a core priority for Microsoft, and Identity and Access Management protections are essential to protecting Microsoft at global scale. We are seeking a Principal Security Engineering manager and leader to guide a team building identity protections that reduce lateral-movement attack surface across Microsoft infrastructure, services, and administrative environments. As a Principal Security Engineering Manager, you will lead a high-performing team of Security Operations Engineers and Technical Program Managers (TPMs) building identity protections that secure Microsoft infrastructure and reduce lateral-movement risk across cloud-critical administration paths. You will apply an engineering-driven approach to security leadership, using data, tooling, automation, and AI to improve team operations, scale protection delivery and operationalization, and establish defensible boundaries in Entra environments. A key part of this role is building a hybrid human and agentic operating model for identity protection engineering. You will define how engineers, TPMs, and AI-powered systems work together to identify lateral-movement risk, design scalable controls, improve protection quality, and accelerate delivery across Microsoft’s identity and access management estate. You will partner with identity engineering, product, security operations, and platform teams to turn protection requirements into durable capabilities that reduce attack surface and strengthen defensible boundaries. This role is ideal for a leader with deep identity security expertise, a track record of organizational leadership, and strong cross-functional influence to drive protection strategy from design through operationalization. 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. In alignment with Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment where all employees positively impact our culture every day. Responsibilities Lead, coach, and grow a U.S.-based team of Security Operations Engineers and TPMs focused on building identity protections that reduce lateral-movement risk across Microsoft’s infrastructure and services. Define the vision, strategy, and priorities for delivering durable identity protection capabilities that improve security outcomes, operational scale, and business impact. Build and operationalize a hybrid human + agentic Security Operations Engineering model, applying AI, automation, and workflow innovation to improve protection design, delivery, monitoring, and response. Foster an engineering-oriented culture that values technical depth, experimentation, continuous improvement, operational excellence, and measurable risk reduction. Partner across identity engineering, product, security operations, detections, data science, and platform teams to translate protection requirements into scalable controls, operational mechanisms, and product improvements. Drive clear, actionable protection outputs for technical teams and leadership, including protection roadmaps, risk assessments, operational readiness plans, and executive-level updates. Establish and maintain engineering standards, quality controls, reliability expectations, and operating mechanisms for identity protection delivery and operations. Develop trusted relationships across Microsoft security, identity, platform, and infrastructure teams to align requirements, remove execution blockers, and scale protection adoption. Represent the team in customer, partner, and leadership engagements by explaining identity protection strategy, lateral-movement risk reduction, and SecOps engineering outcomes. Hire and develop diverse talent, build an inclusive and high-performing team culture, and create an environment where engineers and TPMs can do their best work. Qualifications Required Qualifications: Doctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat modeling, cyber security, anomaly detection, Security Operations Center (SOC) detection, threat analytics, security incident and event management (SIEM), information technology (IT), or operations incident response OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related field AND 4+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat modeling, cyber security, anomaly detection, Security Operations Center (SOC) detection, threat analytics, security incident and event management (SIEM), information technology (IT), or operations incident response OR Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related field AND 6+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat modeling, cyber security, anomaly detection, Security Operations Center (SOC) detection, threat analytics, security incident and event management (SIEM), information technology (IT), or operations incident response OR equivalent experience. 1+ year(s) people management experience. Other requirements: Candidates must be able 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. Additional Qualifications: Experience in product/service/program management or software development OR equivalent experience. 5+ years people management experience. Proven ability to engage credibly with CISOs, SOC/security-operations teams, identity engineers, platform teams, and security engineers, translating real-world defender needs into identity protection strategy, engineering priorities, and operational roadmaps. Experience designing, building, and operating identity protections that reduce lateral-movement risk, strengthen privileged-access boundaries, and improve the security of cloud-critical administrative environments. Sufficient technical fluency in identity architecture, privileged access, lateral-movement risk, protection engineering, and security operations to go deep with engineering and security teams on hard trade-offs, paired with leadership judgment to guide strategy execution and operational scale. Security Operations Engineering M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a dif