> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt.

# Senior AI Engineer

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/f924779faa32f60f

Microsoft posts a senior FDE role to build what the customer runs in Redmond, WA, at $119,800–$234,700 base, below the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,865 postings with pay. Architect and iterate on domain-specific agent experiences across Copilot in Office and Copilot Cowork. Read from the employer’s posting on November 9, 2026.

- [Microsoft](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/microsoft)

First seen Nov 8, 2026 · open on Microsoft careers as of Nov 9, 2026

**$119,800–$234,700** *annualized* Redmond, WA Full-time

Architect and iterate on domain-specific agent experiences across Copilot in Office and Copilot Cowork.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2Ff924779faa32f60f&placement=top)
- [View posting at Microsoft](https://apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/1970393557053724)

Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so.

## At a glance

### Posted base pay

$120K–$235K Below the median

Midpoint $177K · median $190K

This job $120K to $235K. Senior FDE postings, 1,865 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K.

[Compare pay across all Microsoft postings](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/microsoft)

### The work

Builds what the customer runs

Balance **Mostly building**

Project stages

1. Pre-sales (not covered)
2. Proof of concept
3. Implementation
4. Operations

- **Coding**: Writes production code

- **Builds for**: External customers

- **Level**: Senior

- **Role**: Technical lead

### What they ask for

Experience

- **4+ years** technical engineering experience with coding
- **4+ years** professional software development experience with coding *Preferred*
- **2+ years** training, fine-tuning, and evaluating ML/LLM models *Preferred*
- **2+ years** production experience architecting and deploying LLM/agent applications *Preferred*
- **3+ years** technical engineering experience with a Ph.D. *Preferred*

Background

- **Software engineering**

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The posting asks for 4+ years. How many do you have?

The posting reads as a senior role. What level are you at now?

The job is in Redmond, WA. Could you work there?

Which of these have you used in production?

Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent.

[What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths)

## Conditions

- **Location**: Redmond, WA

- **Employment type**: Full-time

- **Pay**:

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- [Other jobs at Microsoft (11)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/microsoft)

## The job description from Microsoft

### Overview

In the 1980s, Microsoft Office transformed knowledge work by moving paper-based documents and ledgers into digital documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Today, Office and the broader Microsoft ecosystem connect how organizations work - their knowledge, decisions, business processes, and institutional expertise. The next transformation is creating AI-native work experiences across Copilot in Office and the Copilot SuperApp, including Copilot Cowork, where intelligent agents understand domain-specific work, reason across organizational context, and complete complex workflows. As a **Senior AI Engineer** on the Microsoft Office AI team, you will bring these experiences to hundreds of millions of people.

Achieving this vision starts with understanding the work itself, directly from the people doing it. Every professional domain has its own workflows, terminology, constraints, business rules, and standards for what constitutes a good outcome, much of which remains buried in long-tail domain knowledge. You will work closely with customers, users, and domain experts to discover how work happens in practice, identify high-value opportunities for AI, and rapidly validate ideas against real customer needs. From there, you will translate ambiguous problems into practical product and technical decisions: which domain-specific workflows agents should handle, what knowledge and tools they need, how much autonomy they should have, and where human judgment remains essential. Success requires moving fluidly between customer conversations and hands-on engineering, turning real-world insights into measurable improvements in how people work.

As a **Senior AI Engineer**, you will turn those insights into systems that work in real customer environments. You will prototype, build, evaluate, deploy, debug, and continuously improve production-grade domain agents across Copilot in Office and Copilot Cowork, working hands-on across grounding, orchestration, tool use, enterprise permissions, reliability, observability, and evaluation. You will collaborate directly with customers to validate solutions against real enterprise data, existing applications, security boundaries, and operational constraints, using production feedback to diagnose failures and iterate quickly.

As common patterns emerge across customers and domain-specific workflows, you will turn repeated solutions into reusable Office AI platform capabilities for agent development, knowledge access, orchestration, evaluation, and debugging. If you share our passion for turning domain expertise into production-grade agents across Copilot, we invite you to join us.

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.

### Responsibilities

- Architect, prototype, and lead the iteration on AI agent experiences that reimagine domain-specific workflows across Copilot in Office and Copilot Cowork, rapidly validating feasibility, UX, and technical approaches while pushing the frontier of agent-driven productivity.
- Drive the delivery of features by operating at the true intersection of SWE, applied science, product, and domain expertise, where a single AI engineer can unlock disproportionate impact by translating customer needs, domain knowledge, model capability, and product intent into intelligent, production-ready systems.
- Design evaluation frameworks and observability tools to monitor real-time agent health, investigate customer feedback, and build continuous learning systems for end-to-end AI workflows.
- Invent and lead industry-defining domain-specialized agent experiences by working directly with customers and domain experts to understand complex and long-tail workflows, explore new interaction paradigms, and build robust system architectures that enable natural collaboration between humans and AI.
- Cultivate a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning. Proactively identify and drive systemic improvements to agent development platforms, engineering and domain knowledge bases, build processes, and engineering standards, while mentoring coworkers to elevate the technical bar of the team.
- Embody Microsoft culture and values.

### Qualifications

### Required Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python

OR equivalent experience.

### Preferred Qualifications

- Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience (or Ph.D. and 3+ years).
- 4+ years of professional software development experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python, Typescript/Javascript, C, C++, or C#
- 2+ years of experience training, fine-tuning, and evaluating ML/LLM models, including data preparation, experiment design, offline/online validation, and performance optimization.
- 2+ years of production experience architecting and deploying applications with LLMs and/or agent systems.
- Course work, research, or relevant training in ML/AI/LLMs, with a demonstrated track record of pushing into new interdisciplinary areas at the intersection of applied science, engineering, and product.
- Proven track record of technical leadership, including orchestrating complex agentic systems in production, advanced prompt design, tool/function calling, context and memory management, routing/planning, and evaluation.
- Deep understanding of async programming patterns, microservices architecture, and event-driven systems.
- Prior experience in a professional domain such as finance, accounting, or human resources, with an understanding of domain-specific workflows, business rules, and customer needs.
- Experience in forward-deployed engineering or similar customer-facing technical roles, partnering directly with customers to build secure and scalable systems, operate deployed solutions, and continuously improve them based on production feedback.
- Growth mindset, resilience, and communication & collaboration skills.

#OPG #OPGHiring

Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $160,200 - $261,000 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.**

[View posting at Microsoft](https://apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/1970393557053724)

## About Microsoft

Microsoft sells cloud infrastructure, productivity software, and AI tools to enterprises and consumers globally, anchored by Azure, Office 365, and the OpenAI partnership.

Public · 5000+ people

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- [Compare senior FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/senior)
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