Overview

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?

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 Systems 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, One Drive, Skype, Teams and Xbox Live.

The SPARC organization manages Azure’s hardware roadmap from architecture concept through production for all of Microsoft’s current and future on-line services.  This role is for a highly motivated Firmware Engineer with a strong background in driver design and development. You will be involved with all phases of product development, from secure silicon design through manufacturing and supply chain, and into high scale deployment. At the design phase, you will work with the security threat model team and be responsible for the silicon security architecture and design of low-level hardware accelerators.

Responsibilities:

This role is for a highly motivated and experienced Firmware Engineer with a strong background in driver development, firmware development, silicon power-on. You will be involved with all phases of product development, from silicon design through firmware architecture and design, manufacturing, and productization. At the design phase, you will lead the driver and firmware architecture and design for accelerator chips and be part of the team responsible for firmware development, including driver interface, power-on, initialization, protocol and feature development of low-level hardware.

The candidate should have strong coding skills, debugging and troubleshooting abilities, with experience with Linux or Windows driver development. The successful candidate should have experience with some or all of the following: firmware development, driver development, bootloaders, CPU initialization, board support package development, peripherals such as PCIe, NVMe, DMA, IOMMU, I2C, SPI, USB, UARTs. Understanding OS primitives, IO processing, memory management, scheduling, interrupt handling, and threading.

Qualifications:

Required Qualifications:

• Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 1+ year(s) technical engineering experience OR Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years technical engineering experience
• OR equivalent experience.
• 4+ years of professional experience designing Linux or Windows driver development
• 5+ years of proven and demonstrated experience in C or C++.
• 4+ years of experience with developing PCIe, USB, DMA, IOMMU etc.

Other Requirements:

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications

• Solid understanding of operating systems concepts
• Experience with kernel-level programming or debugging
• Proficiency in at least one systems programming language (e.g., C, C++, Rust)
• Familiarity with version control tools such as Git
• Knowledge of security principles and cryptographic practices
• Experience working in pre-silicon environments is preferred
• Ability to debug and resolve issues spanning multiple subsystems.

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 $158,400 - $258,000 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.