Senior Network HW System Engineer

Microsoft Silicon Cloud Hardware and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) is the team behind Microsofts expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsofts Intelligent Cloud mission. SCHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsofts over 200 online businesses including Bing MSN Office 365 Xbox Live Teams OneDrive and the Microsoft Azure platform globally with our server and data center infrastructure security and compliance operations globalization and manageability solutions. Our focus is on smart growth high efficiency and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for passionate engineers to help achieve that mission.

Microsofts Hardware Systems organization is developing AI-native silicon and system-level solutions to power the next generation of frontier AI models. The MAIA platform combines custom accelerators advanced networking technologies large-scale distributed infrastructure and cloud-scale software to deliver industry-leading AI training and inference capabilities.

The Platform Systems Engineering (PSE) team is seeking a Sr. AI Network Systems Engineer to develop integrate validate and deploy networking solutions for next-generation MAIA AI systems.

This role works at the intersection of networking hardware custom silicon AI infrastructure and hyperscale systems. You will collaborate across architecture silicon firmware hardware software validation manufacturing and Azure infrastructure teams to deliver high-performance scale-up and scale-out networking for AI training and inference platforms. The role spans switches NICs PHYs MAC/PCS high-speed SerDes copper and optical interconnects and rack-scale networking infrastructure.

Microsofts 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.

AI Networking Architecture & System Development

• Develop and integrate scale-up and scale-out networking solutions for MAIA AI training and inference systems.

• Translate AI/ML workload requirements into system-level networking requirements.

• Evaluate architecture tradeoffs across performance reliability power scalability serviceability and cost.

Network Hardware Integration & Bring-Up

• Drive integration bring-up and qualification of switches NICs PHYs MAC/PCS SerDes optics cables and backplane technologies.

• Collaborate across silicon firmware hardware software and OS teams to resolve complex integration issues.

• Partner with technology vendors ODMs and CMs through qualification and production readiness.

AI Fabric Validation & Performance

• Develop end-to-end validation strategies covering functionality performance scale interoperability reliability and stress.

• Characterize AI fabric performance including bandwidth latency link utilization congestion behavior and communication efficiency.

• Develop validation methodologies for rack-scale and cluster-scale AI infrastructure.

High-Speed Electrical & Optical Interconnects

• Drive qualification of next-generation electrical and optical networking technologies including high-speed SerDes copper interconnects optical modules and high-density connectivity.

• Evaluate technologies such as PAM4 SerDes DAC/AEC OSFP/QSFP-DD advanced optical interconnects LPO/LRO CPO and silicon photonics.

• Analyze system-level tradeoffs across performance power reliability signal/link integrity and scalability.

Debug Telemetry & Automation

• Lead root-cause analysis of complex networking issues across PHY SerDes MAC/PCS switches NICs firmware and system software.

• Develop and improve telemetry diagnostics validation automation and network health monitoring.

• Use lab characterization and system telemetry to drive issues to resolution and improve platform reliability.

Required Qualifications:

• Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering Mechanical Engineering or related field AND 3 years technical engineering experience
  • OR Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering Mechanical Engineering or related field AND 5 years technical engineering experience
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 5 years of experience developing or validating networking compute storage or accelerator hardware systems.
• 5 years of experience designing integrating validating or troubleshooting Ethernet-based networking infrastructure including switches NICs optics PHYs or high-speed SerDes technologies.
• 5 years of experience supporting AI HPC cloud or large-scale data center infrastructure deployments.

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:

• Experience with GPU FPGA TPU or custom AI accelerator systems supporting AI/ML workloads.

• Experience with scale-up and scale-out AI networking and distributed AI infrastructure.

• Electrical networking expertise in areas such as 112G/224G SerDes PAM4 MAC/PCS FEC link training signal integrity DACs and AECs or optical expertise in areas such as OSFP/QSFP-DD AOCs optical transceivers optical link characterization and diagnostics.

• Familiarity with optical technologies such as DR4/DR8/FR4 optical link budgets OMA TDECQ receiver sensitivity LPO LRO CPO or silicon photonics.

• Understanding of AI workload communication patterns network collectives traffic profiles and congestion behavior.

• Familiarity with IEEE Ethernet OIF CMIS and emerging AI networking technologies.

• Experience with Linux telemetry diagnostics scripting test automation and network qualification.

• Experience with hyperscale datacenter infrastructure and hardware development from prototype through production.

#azure #MAIA #AI/ML #Networking Hardware

Hardware Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119800 - $234700 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 $160200 - $261000 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
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.

Required Experience:

IC