Overview As Microsoft continues to push the boundaries of AI, we are on the lookout for passionate leaders to help us tackle the most interesting and challenging AI questions of our time. Our vision is bold and broad, to build systems that have true artificial intelligence across agents, applications, services, and infrastructure. It's also inclusive: we aim to make AI accessible to all, consumers, businesses, developers, so that everyone can realize its benefits.We're looking for a Data Infrastructure Manager to lead a team of talented engineers building and scaling the data infrastructure that powers Microsoft's consumer AI. This role sits at the intersection of technical leadership and people management. You'll set the technical direction for large-scale data and ML pipelines, AI agentic workflows, and intelligent systems while growing a high-performing team of ICs. If you've architected big data platforms from the ground up and are now ready to multiply your impact through others, including on some of the most exciting AI infrastructure challenges in the industry, we want to hear from you.

You'll bring:

• Deep technical expertise in big data and distributed systems
• A track record of leading and developing engineering talent
• A passion for automation, observability, and operational excellence
• The ability to translate complex technical strategy into clear, executable plans
• Empathy, collaboration, and a growth mindset

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 realize 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.

Starting January 26, 2026, Microsoft AI (MAI) employees who live within a 50-mile commute of a designated Microsoft office in the U.S. or 25-mile commute of a non-U.S., country-specific location are expected to work from the office at least four days per week. This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction.

Responsibilities:

Team Leadership & People Development- Hire, mentor, and develop a team of Data Infrastructure Engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous growth.

• Conduct regular 1:1s, set clear goals, and provide actionable feedback to support each engineer's career development.
• Build and sustain an inclusive, collaborative team environment aligned with Microsoft's values of Respect, Integrity, Accountability, and Inclusion.
  Technical Strategy & Architecture- Define and drive the technical vision for a scalable, reliable, and observable Big Data Infrastructure serving mission-critical AI applications, including agentic and intelligent systems.
• Lead technical design reviews, establish engineering standards, and ensure a clean, secure, and well-documented codebase.
• Partner with engineers to architect data solutions across storage, compute, and analytics layers, including the pipelines and orchestration frameworks that underpin AI agent workflows, balancing long-term scalability with near-term delivery.
  Platform & Operations- Champion DevOps and SRE best practices across the team, including automated deployments, service monitoring, and incident response.
• Guide the team in building a self-service big data platform that empowers data engineers, researchers, and partner teams.
• Oversee robust CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices using tools like Bicep, Terraform, and ARM.
• Lead capacity planning and drive proactive resolution of bottlenecks in data pipelines and infrastructure.
  Cross-Functional Collaboration- Act as a key technical partner to Data Engineers, Data Scientists, AI Researchers, ML Engineers, and Developers to deliver secure, seamless big data workflows.
• Collaborate with Security teams to uphold strong infrastructure security practices (IAM, OAuth, Kerberos).
• Represent the team in planning and prioritization discussions, translating organizational goals into actionable engineering roadmaps.

Qualifications:

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Math, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years experience in business analytics, data science, software development, data modeling or data engineering workOR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Math, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field AND 4+ years experience in business analytics, data science, software development, or data engineering workOR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 10+ years of technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree AND 14+ years, OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years in Big Data Infrastructure, DevOps, SRE, or Platform Engineering.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with distributed systems from bare-metal to cloud-native environments.
• 5+ years overseeing or contributing to containerized application deployments using Kubernetes and Helm/Kustomize.
• Solid scripting and automation fluency in Python, Bash, or PowerShell.
• Proven track record managing CI/CD pipelines, release automation, and production incident response.
• Hands-on expertise with modern data platforms like Databricks, including deep familiarity with relational and NoSQL databases, key-value stores, Spark compute engines, distributed file systems (e.g., HDFS, ADLS Gen2), and messaging systems (e.g., Event Hub, Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Proven experience with cloud-native infrastructure across Azure, AWS, or GCP.
• Strong collaboration history with Data Engineers, Data Scientists, ML Engineers, Networking, and Security teams.
• Experience with agentic workflow infrastructure, including orchestration frameworks (e.g., Semantic Kernel, Auto Gen), retrieval pipelines, and the data infrastructure patterns that support multi-agent systems at scale.
• Familiarity with modern web stacks: TypeScript, Node.js, React, and optionally PHP.

#MicrosoftAI #MAIDPS

Software Engineering M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 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.