Julie Richings
Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft
10+ years building billing infrastructure, sovereign cloud platforms, and observability systems at scale. Engineering leader, mentor, and builder.
About
I'm a Senior Software Development Engineer at Microsoft, where I've spent the last decade working across billing infrastructure, financial services, and platform engineering. My work spans everything from building the billing platform that processes revenue for Microsoft's largest commercial customers to deploying services across sovereign cloud environments.
I'm the recognized subject matter expert for observability across Commerce Financial Services, and I've led initiatives ranging from zero-downtime database migrations to cross-team design forums that became some of the highest-value meetings in the org.
Outside of Microsoft, I'm a mom, a homeschooler, and an active user of autonomous AI agents for personal projects. I hold a BSE in Computer Engineering from the University of Iowa (magna cum laude, 3.96 GPA).
Experience
2025 - Present
Senior SDE - External Invoicing & FCE
Microsoft
Owning billing infrastructure for Microsoft's largest commercial customers. Led the live service migration of FCE (Financial Customer Experience), managing a team of 5 engineers. Delivered in half the estimated timeline by restructuring the plan and parallelizing work streams. Building full-stack Azure UX for enterprise PO management.
2021 - 2025
Senior SDE - Invoicing
Microsoft
Led the migration from a custom async processor to an Azure-native event-driven platform using EventHub and Service Bus, a cornerstone of Microsoft's trillion-dollar platform initiative. Invented the step-select deployment pattern (adopted across multiple teams after CVP-level presentation). Owned sovereign cloud migrations. Decreased build times by 30-50%. Reduced SQL storage by 20%. Created the Invoicing Insights cross-team design forum.
2018 - 2021
SDE II - Subscription Billing
Microsoft
Built the automatic subscription billing platform. Became the recognized observability SME across all of Commerce Financial Services. Led a v-team of 4 engineers on monitoring migration. Built workload-based auto-scaling that reduced Azure infrastructure costs. Designed the payment recognition system for debt collection.
2015 - 2018
SDE - Groove Music, Movies & TV
Microsoft
Developed the default media applications on Windows 10. Shipped twice monthly across Windows PC, Phone, Xbox, and HoloLens. Led the migration from Source Depot to Git source control across multiple teams.
Skills
Languages
Cloud & Infrastructure
Platforms & Tools
Domains
Connect
Find me on LinkedIn or check out my work on GitHub.