Senior Firmware Engineer

Overview

Are you passionate about building highly reliable cloud infrastructure on a planetary scale? The Azure Hardware Diagnostics team is responsible for delivering firmware-driven diagnostic and validation solutions that ensure the health, reliability, and availability of Azure datacenter hardware.

We are seeking a Senior Firmware Engineer with deep expertise in platform firmware, hardware diagnostics, and failure analysis to drive end-to-end diagnostic capabilities across Azure server platforms. In this role, you will be a technical leader responsible for architecting, developing, and deploying firmware-based diagnostic solutions that enable rapid fault isolation, root-cause analysis, and predictive health monitoring for compute, memory, storage, networking, and accelerator subsystems.

You will work across the hardware, firmware, operating system, and cloud-stack boundaries, partnering closely with silicon vendors, platform engineering teams, datacenter operations, reliability engineering, and Azure service teams to improve hardware quality and reduce customer impact from infrastructure failures. Your work will directly influence the reliability and availability of millions of servers powering Microsoft's cloud services.

Responsibilities

• Own firmware-based diagnostic readiness across Azure server platforms from architecture and bring-up through production support.

• Design diagnostic frameworks across silicon telemetry, hardware interfaces, platform firmware, operating systems, and cloud health systems.

• Lead platform bring-up, validation, and root-cause investigations for complex hardware, firmware, and system software issues.

• Develop diagnostic telemetry, health monitoring, fault-detection, automation, and triage tooling to improve fleet reliability.

• Collaborate with silicon vendors, ODM/OEM partners, and internal platform teams to define diagnostic requirements and improve serviceability.

• Mentor engineers and drive engineering excellence through design reviews, code reviews, metrics, validation coverage, and secure firmware practices.

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

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.

Additional qualifications

• Experience with large-scale cloud infrastructure, hyperscale datacenters, Azure infrastructure, or fleet health management systems.

• 6+ years developing platform firmware, embedded software, or low-level systems software for server, embedded, or datacenter platforms.

• Strong proficiency in C/C++ with experience building, debugging, and shipping firmware solutions through full development cycles.

• Experience developing or debugging firmware-based diagnostic and validation solutions for server-class hardware.

• Ability to independently root-cause cross-stack issues involving hardware, firmware, operating systems, telemetry, and infrastructure.

• Strong collaboration and technical leadership skills, including driving discussions across multiple engineering organizations and external partners.

• Knowledge of memory diagnostics, PCIe diagnostics, storage reliability, accelerator/GPU health monitoring, or platform serviceability.

• Experience with firmware telemetry pipelines, cloud-scale diagnostic data analytics, reliability analysis, or predictive failure detection.

• Experience developing automation frameworks for validation, failure triage, manufacturing diagnostics, data collection, or fleet-scale testing.

• Experience with Rust, C#, Redfish protocols, and service-oriented architecture for firmware, diagnostics, platform management, or telemetry systems.

• Experience using AI-assisted or agentic code development workflows to improve engineering productivity, automation, validation, or diagnostics tooling.

#SCHIE

Firmware 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:

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. (