How did David Fowler get promoted to principal engineer at Microsoft?

David Fowler told Ryan Peterman that his path to principal ran through the .NET Core rewrite. While still a senior engineer he was pulled off Kudu, an Azure deployment service, and made one of two architects of the new cross-platform .NET. After the first year of designing and building it, during which he learned to scale himself across roughly 30 engineers, he was promoted to principal.

• Fowler says a strong track record is what got him chosen for the new project.
• The promotion came the same year his first child was born.

▸In their words

“It was me and another principal engineer” David Fowler · at 2:02 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Ryan Peterman (2026-10-21). Read the whole episode summary →

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