Hi, I'm Dylan Clark. I'm a Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft, based in Cambridge, MA. I build backend services, shared frameworks, and great developer experiences. I enjoy tackling hard problems by understanding the space, building consensus, and delivering maintainable solutions.
What I'm buildingI build services for agentic Outlook experiences, taking them from an idea or requirement to a worldwide deployment. As I build, I focus on validation, monitoring, and evaluations to make sure the software works well as it grows. I like carrying an idea through that whole process, including the work it takes to make it dependable in production.
AI is a huge part of how I build. I develop tools and agentic workflows with a focus on developer experience and reliability, including automating the generation of deterministic compliance artifacts, pushing partners to modernize their workflows for the AI-development era, and sharing best practices to help those around me succeed in this time of rapid change. I like finding the repeated friction in a team's day and building something that gets it out of the way.
How I got hereI joined Microsoft after graduating from Harvard in 2018 and started in desktop Outlook, working in C++. Since then, I've helped build a shared WebView2 application hosting framework used by Outlook, Copilot, OneDrive, and other Microsoft products. Here I discovered a love for carefully designing APIs and writing code, working directly with adopting teams, and making it easier for them to debug and contribute improvements.
Some of the most rewarding work has meant getting into a codebase I'm not familliar with. When an integration depends on a service with missing technical context, I learn the codebase, understand how it's evolved, and work with the owning team to implement the changes. I've also spent years on the work that keeps releases dependable: build systems, staged rollouts, telemetry, and figuring out why an update didn't do what we expected.
How I workI'm a generalist with a particular fondness for backends, frameworks, and developer tools. Give me a fuzzy problem, a few people with different priorities, and something useful to build, and I'm happy. I like getting enough context to make a decision, testing the risky assumptions, and getting a first version into people's hands so we can learn from it.
Sometimes that means leading a cross-team effort; sometimes it means pairing with someone or digging into an unfamiliar service myself. I care about being a patient, useful teammate. Mentoring engineers and helping them take ownership of bigger problems has become one of my favorite parts of the job.
Tools and interests- C#/.NET and modern C++; TypeScript, React, and Python when the work takes me there
- MCP, coding agents, and developer experience for AI
- Azure services, Docker, Kubernetes-based infrastructure, and infrastructure as code
- CMake, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, and all the other fun tools that get thrown together to ship code
- APIs people can understand, useful telemetry, and systems that someone besides the author can maintain
I'm especially motivated to apply AI to the everyday work that still involves too much friction so people can spend more time being productive and intellectually engaged. If you're building something interesting, I'd love to hear about it.
Email: dylanmclark (at) outlook (dot) com