Cloud Principal Hardware Engineer

Overview Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) is the team behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” mission. SCHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft’s 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. As Microsoft’s cloud business continues to grow, the ability to deploy new offerings and HW infrastructure on time, in high volume, with high quality and lowest cost is of paramount importance. To achieve this goal, the SCHIE team is instrumental in defining and delivering measures of success for hardware design, qualification, fleet support, scale, and sustainability related to Microsoft cloud hardware. Azure Memory and Storage Center of Excellence (AMS CoE) is part of the SCHIE organization focusing on memory and storage devices going into the cloud hardware servers. AMS provides memory and storage solutions to Azure and drives memory and storage suppliers to deliver high quality products that meet our requirements. AMS CoE also leads Azure Fault Prediction and Detection (AFPD) , the platform that predicts, detects and repairs hardware failures across the Azure fleet. We are looking for a Cloud Principal Hardware Engineer to scale AFPD across hardware components in the Azure fleet and to lead hands-on hardware resiliency for the platform. The opportunity: Every hour a server sits unhealthy is an hour of lost customer capacity. AFPD turns hardware, firmware and OS telemetry into early detection and prediction of failures, moves customer workloads off failing nodes, and sends a targeted repair for the part that failed. Repair outcomes and supplier failure analysis then improve the next rule or model. You’ll work across the full server platform, including storage, memory, power supplies, CPUs, GPUs, NICs, HBAs/FPGAs, cabling, and other critical hardware components. As a trusted SME (Subject Matter Expert) you’ll help identify potential failures, improve hardware reliability, and prevent disruptions before they impact customers. Your impact will be felt at massive scale. Across millions of nodes, every reliability improvement translates into fewer customer VM interruptions, faster restoration of online capacity, and a more resilient cloud infrastructure. Why this role: Your impact shows up in fleet availability and customer uptime, quarter over quarter. You will set the hardware direction for a platform that influences production infrastructure at a scale, and you will work directly with Azure engineering, component teams and leading hardware suppliers. #SCHIE #azurehwjobs

Responsibilities

• Lead failure analysis across server components: characterize failure modes from fleet telemetry and logs and confirm root cause with repair results and supplier failure analysis.
• Define the signals, thresholds, targeted diagnostics and repair recipes, and work with component teams for the root cause analysis.
• Improve isolation accuracy so each repair address the source of failures: improve efficacy of the detection and repair services.
• Partner with software engineers and data scientists on detection rules and prediction models; set precision targets and validation gates before a rule or model takes action on production nodes.
• Leverage AI-powered tools and data-driven insights to analyze hardware failures, identify emerging reliability trends, and proactively improve server performance and availability.
• Lead root cause and corrective actions with server components, including firmware fixes, and feed the learnings back into the platform.
• Lead as the senior hardware escalation point for live-site incidents, from triage through root cause to fleet-wide mitigation.
• Make new server generations and AI/GPU platforms platform-ready before they reach production, with detection, isolation and repair coverage at launch.
• Track and improve metrics & mentor engineers across the team

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 7+ years technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience OR equivalent experience.

Other Qualifications: Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements is 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:

• 10+ years in server hardware reliability, failure analysis or fleet resiliency at cloud or datacenter scale.
• Technical depth in the failure modes of at least one server component type, with working knowledge across the rest of the server (BMC, PCIe, firmware).
• Experience turning failure signatures into automated detection rules, fault codes or repair procedures for a large fleet
• Experience with predictive maintenance or anomaly detection on hardware telemetry, including setting precision targets and automated repair actions.
• Proficiency with Kusto (Azure Data Explorer) or SQL, and Python or PowerShell, for large-scale telemetry analysis.
• Experience using or applying AI-powered tools, machine learning technologies, or advanced analytics to support engineering analysis, troubleshooting, or process improvements.
• Experience with NPI and hardware qualification for server platforms.

Hardware Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $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: 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.