Senior Service Engineer - Azure Storage

Imagine a world with virtually unlimited storage, accessible anytime, anywhere, from any device. A world where individuals, businesses, researchers, and organizations can securely store, access, analyze, and collaborate on data on a global scale. Microsoft Azure Storage is making that vision a reality. Azure Storage is Microsoft's massively scalable, highly distributed, and ubiquitously accessible cloud storage platform, powering critical workloads for customers around the world. As Azure continues its rapid growth, we are building the next generation of storage infrastructure designed to manage Exabytes of data today and scale toward Zettabytes in the future.

The Azure Storage NPI SKU Qualification & Performance team plays a critical role in enabling this growth. We are responsible for validating and qualifying the next generation of Azure Storage hardware and platform technologies, including servers, SSDs, networking components, firmware releases, and platform innovations before they are deployed into production. Our team develops automated validation frameworks, performs large-scale performance and reliability analysis, investigates complex qualification issues, and partners closely with engineering teams and hardware vendors to ensure every Azure Storage SKU meets Microsoft's high standards for performance, reliability, scalability, and operational excellence.

As a Senior Service Engineer, you will serve as a technical leader responsible for driving qualification strategy, performance validation, production readiness reviews, and complex investigations spanning software, hardware, firmware, and platform layers. You will work at the intersection of cloud services, storage systems, performance engineering, automation, and reliability engineering to influence the future of Azure Storage infrastructure at hyperscale. This role offers a unique opportunity to solve challenging technical problems, influence engineering decisions across multiple organizations, and help bring next-generation technologies into production. You will collaborate with talented engineers across Microsoft and industry-leading hardware vendors while driving innovations that directly impact the reliability and performance of one of the world's largest cloud storage platforms.

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.

• Lead end-to-end qualification and production readiness validation for new Azure Storage hardware SKUs, platforms, SSDs, networking devices, and firmware releases
• Drive qualification strategy, test planning, execution, and sign-off recommendations for Azure Storage deployments. Design and develop scalable automation frameworks that improve qualification coverage, efficiency, quality, and engineering productivity
• Serve as a technical escalation point for qualification failures, performance regressions, reliability issues, and production-readiness concerns impacting Azure Storage deployments
• Own complex investigations across software, hardware, firmware, and platform stacks to identify and resolve qualification blockers. Validate SKU readiness against Azure Storage performance, reliability, scalability, and operational requirements
• Analyze large-scale telemetry, benchmark data, and fleet health signals to identify performance trends, bottlenecks, risks, and optimization opportunities. Monitor qualification pipelines and proactively identify risks impacting production onboarding, deployment schedules, and service readiness
• Perform root cause analysis for hardware, firmware, platform, and software issues discovered during qualification and drive corrective actions to closure. Influence qualification standards, test methodologies, performance thresholds, and operational best practices across Azure Storage NPI programs
• Partner with Storage, Compute, Networking, Platform, and vendor engineering teams to resolve critical qualification, reliability, and performance issues. Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership on qualification methodologies, performance analysis, automation, operational excellence, and engineering fundamentals

Required Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field AND 2+ years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field AND 4+ years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration
  • OR equivalent experience

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:

• Doctorate Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration
  • OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field AND 8+ years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration
  • OR equivalent experience
• 3+ years technical experience working with large-scale cloud or distributed systems
• Experience with:
  • large-scale cloud services, distributed systems, or hyperscale datacenter infrastructure
  • storage technologies such as SSDs, NVMe devices, storage controllers, and server platforms
  • qualifying new hardware platforms, firmware releases, networking devices, or platform technologies for production deployment
  • analyzing performance benchmarks, telemetry, and reliability metrics to identify bottlenecks and drive performance improvements
  • building automation, test infrastructure, monitoring solutions, or engineering productivity tools using technologies such as C#, Python, PowerShell, or Kusto
• Demonstrated technical leadership through mentoring engineers, driving cross-team initiatives, and influencing engineering standards and best practices

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Site Reliability 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 $160,200 - $261,000 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.