Senior Software Engineer

Do you want to be at the forefront of innovating the latest hardware designs to propel Microsoft's cloud growth? Are you seeking a unique career opportunity that combines technical capabilities, cross-team collaboration with business insight and strategy? This Senior Software Engineer role with a focus on supporting hardware/software co-design and evaluation of novel systems architecture concepts to improve datacenter performance, efficiency, and reliability might be the right one for you. 

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 achieve 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 our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day. 

Join the Strategic Planning and Architecture (SPARC) team within Microsoft's Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure (AHSI) organization, the team behind Microsoft's expanding Cloud Infrastructure and for powering Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud" mission. Microsoft delivers more than 200 online services to more than one billion individuals worldwide, and AHSI is the team behind our expanding cloud infrastructure. We deliver the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's cloud businesses including Microsoft Azure, Bing, MSN, Office 365, OneDrive, Skype, Teams and Xbox Live.    

As part of the Systems Planning and Architecture (SPARC) group, you will help with pathfinding and architecture for future compute platforms, storage and related technologies that create advantages for Azure and Microsoft. You will collaborate across the Azure organization to evaluate next-generation datacenter technologies and influence Azure product roadmaps for both Microsoft and 3rd party silicon and systems. 

Responsibilities for this role span: 

• Develop a deep understanding of workloads across key Azure segments and lead detailed performance evaluation of usage scenarios  
• Orchestrate experimental setups to evaluate workload performance and inform architecture decisions for effective hardware/software co-design. 
• Guide architecture for next-generation technologies through functional and performant PoC definitions and end-to-end prototyping. 
• Support pathfinding to identify and quantify optimization opportunities with distributed and disaggregated system architectures. 
• Support hardware validation and software enabling teams towards productization. 

Success in this role requires: 

• Listening to Azure infrastructure experts and customers to identify current and emerging problems.  
• Identifying promising technologies to address problems that are relevant for Azure business, engage with ecosystem partners, and derisking productization via capable proof-of-concepts.
• Working across organizational boundaries with roadmap planners, product architects, and hardware and software engineering teams to land promising solutions in Azure data centers.

Required Qualifications 

• 7+ years of technical engineering experience
  • OR Bachelor's degree in Electrical engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 10+ years of technical engineering experience 
  • OR Master's degree in Electrical engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years of technical engineering experience 
  • OR Doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years of technical engineering experience. 
• 5+ years of experience with system performance evaluation using industry standard benchmarks and/or common cloud workloads 
• 5+ years of experience with significant hardware/software co-design projects involving CPU and/or systems architecture and influencing technical direction. 
• Intellectual curiosity and passion for learning and deploying new technologies.   
• Verbal and written communication skills and ability to engage technical & non-technical peers  
• Experience contributing to complex projects with respect and integrity, including those with multiple workstreams spanning different business and technical disciplines.

Preferred Qualifications 

• Deep expertise in CPU, memory and I/O virtualization hardware and software architecture.
• Skilled in partnering and influencing architects, hardware engineers, and software leads.
• Experience with gathering and analyzing system telemetry and low-level performance counters to identify and root-cause performance bottlenecks. 
• Problem-solving skills, analytical capabilities, and attention to detail.
• Ability to manage through ambiguity, teamwork, and sense of presumed responsibility.

Other Requirements 

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. 

You'll have significant opportunities to learn about cloud usage and emerging datacenter technologies. Microsoft supports your growth through training, mentorship, and career development programs. This role offers hybrid work flexibility, with upto 40% work from home time. 

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.