Service Engineer

Job ID: 200031149Posted: 2026-08-26Location: United States, Washington, RedmondSalary: USD $102,100 - $202,200 per yearEmployment type: Full-TimeWork site: 3 days / week in-officeRole type: Individual ContributorTravel: Less than 25%Profession: Software EngineeringDiscipline: Service EngineeringCompany: MicrosoftOverviewAre you a customer-obsessed, AI-curious problem-solver who thrives in an inclusive, collaborative global team? Join Engineering Operations (EngOps) – the organization driving operational excellence across the Microsoft Cloud to strengthen quality, reliability, security, and customer trust. As part of EngOps, you’ll design solutions that prevent issues before they happen, embed AI-powered automation, and turn signals into actions that deliver measurable customer impact. Our culture of empowerment, inclusion, and growth mindset defines how we work. The Customer Reliability Engineering (CRE) team within Azure EngOps is a top-level pillar of Azure Engineering responsible for world-class live-site management, customer reliability engagements, modern customer-first experiences for scale, and drives deep customer insights and empathy into the broader Azure Engineering organization. Our “no dead-end’s” philosophy ensures that every customer, regardless of size or scale, can realize their full potential through the Microsoft Cloud We are seeking decisive and experienced Service Engineers for Live Site Issues, Problem Management and driving Customer reliability space. This role is accountable for enhancing the customer experience across Azure, including First Party Services. The ideal candidate will demonstrate strong breadth in managing complex, highly available services, paired with deep technical expertise in Azure Core Services and their inter dependencies. You will work closely with Customers, First Parties, Customer Support, Livesite, and Engineering teams to deliver critical, customer-facing features. Success in this role requires the ability to influence and collaborate across many Azure servicing teams to ensure customer needs are met. In addition, this role includes on-call responsibilities for managing and resolving complex multi-service outages. It requires the ability to remain effective under pressure, apply broad technical and analytical skills, and coordinate seamlessly with internal service teams and stakeholders. Strong communication skills—both written and verbal—are essential. You will also lead the evolution of Azure's Incident Management practice through Post-Incident Reviews, process development, and system automation. By leveraging telemetry and metrics, you will identify and drive platform-wide improvements with global impact. You’ll be the single point of command and control during high-severity incidents, orchestrating cross-functional engineering, operations, and communications to minimize impact, restore services quickly, and protect the trust of our global customer base. This role offers a unique opportunity to make immediate impact, improve systems at scale. #engops, #CREResponsibilitiesTo be successful in this role, you must have a great track record of customer compassion, an engineering mindset, an innate aptitude for agility, and technical excellence in software engineering. Collaborate closely with Engineering/PM to ensure the availability, performance of Live Site and the satisfaction of our customers Lead and manage high-severity incidents across Azure services, serving as the single point of accountability to ensure rapid detection, triage, resolution, and customer communication.Act as the central authority during live site incidents, driving real-time decision-making and coordination across Engineering, Support, PM, Communications, and Field teams.Contribute to the design of V. Next architecture for Cloud infrastructure services, based on Customer/ First party engagements. Engage in major production triage efforts and work with different teams in the identification of root cause of highly impactful or complex issues as required and identify Product gaps and work with Product teams to bridge the gaps. Partner closely with Software developers, Product Managers, architects, and Infrastructure teams to drive delivery of sustainable and reusable design solution patterns to ensure non-functional production support requirements are adopted early in the Migration /DeploymentPromote a customer-first culture by prioritizing availability, reliability, and platform trust in every response.Participate in the on-call rotation.Analyze customer-impacting signals from telemetry, support cases, and feedback to identify root causes, drive incident reviews (RCAs/PIRs), and implement preventative service improvements. Drive continuous improvement of the Azure platform by incorporating learnings from live site events and customer feedback, ensuring improved reliability, observability, and supportability.Collaborate closely with Engineering and Product teams to influence and implement service resiliency enhancements, auto-remediation tools, and customer-centric mitigation strategies.Identify and advocate for customer self-service capabilities, improved documentation, and scalable solutions that empower customers to resolve common issues independently. Design and drive adoption of incident response playbooks, mitigation levers, and operational frameworks aligned to real-world support scenarios and strategic customer needs.Contribute to the design of next-generation architecture for cloud infrastructure services with a focus on reliability and strategic customer support outcomes. Build and maintain cross-functional partnerships, ensuring alignment across engineering, business, and support organizations. Be data-driven and results-focused, using metrics to evaluate incident response effectiveness and platform health.Bring an engineering mindset to operational challenges, balancing agility, scalability, and technical excellence.Exhibit strong cross-team collaboration, engineering mindset, and results-oriented execution under pressure QualificationsRequired Qualifications:Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Data Science, Cybersecurity, or related field AND 2+ years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, service engineering, systems engineering, or industrial controlsOR equivalent experienceOther 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 thereafterPreferred Qualifications:2-4+ Yrs of experience in roles cloud operations, incident response, SRE or large-scale system engineering preferably in platforms like Azure, AWS, or GCP. Must hav Service Engineering experience in a 24 x 7 x 365 enterprise environments.  Exceptional command-and-control communication skills—able to drive clarity and direction with customers - internal Microsoft stake holders and third-party vendors during ambiguity and chaos. Deep understanding of cloud architecture patterns, microservices, and containerization. Demonstrated ability to make decisions quickly, under pressure, and with limited data—without compromising long-term reliability. Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, Splunk, New Relic). Fluency in one or more automation languages (PowerShell, Python, CLI etc.)  Understanding ITIL or other incident management frameworks is a must. Understand High Availability, Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity, Performance Tuning. Demonstrates strategic thinking, quantitative and analytical skills, team leadership, and collaboration.  Excellent problem resolution, judgment, negotiating and decision-making skills .Desired Strong knowledge of Windows Platform or Linux, developer tools and ability to diagnose and debug user code. Effectively manage and prioritize multiple tasks in accordance with high level objectives/projects.  3+ Years of demonstrated experience as an Incident Commander or Crisis Manager for critical, high-severity incidents in high-availability, distributed environments. Experience with SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) principles and practices. Exposure to chaos engineering, fault injection, or high availability architecture. AI/ML Experience: [Beginner to Intermediate] Familiarity with how AI/ML models are integrated into cloud infrastructure and their potential failure modes. Experience using AI-powered tools for incident analysis, log correlation, or predictive alerting. An understanding of the challenges and risks associated with AI/ML systems in a production environment. Excellent communication skill (written + verbal) in English, especially in high-pressure scenarios. Ability to communicate with a variety of audiences; including high-profile customers, executive management, and engineering teams.  Desired BS/BA in Computer Science, Engineering, Math or equivalent experience. Certifications: Relevant cloud certifications (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Azure Solutions Architect, GCP Professional Cloud Architect). Certifications in ITIL, SRE, or other relevant frameworks. Service Engineering IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $102,100 - $202,200 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 $133,800 - $219,200 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.