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Job Details
Posted date: Dec 16, 2025
Category: Software Quality Engineering
Location: Multiple Locations, Multiple Locations
Estimated salary: $188,900
Range: $119,800 - $258,000
Employment type: Full-Time
Work location type: 0 days / week in-office – remote
Role: Individual Contributor
Description
OverviewJoin us as we scale Azure to new heights! We’re building innovative systems to enhance the performance and efficiency of the millions of server nodes that power Microsoft Azure. You’ll be part of a collaborative and supportive team focused on understanding how hardware and software components work together to shape our Azure virtual machine (VM) products. Our work spans fleet performance optimization, benchmark construction, competitive analysis, customer engagement, platform design influence, and AI-driven performance insights.
As a Senior Server Performance Architect in this role, you will work on identifying and addressing VM performance issues. You will find opportunities for improvement through internal testing as well as by working directly with Azure customers to understand their use cases. You will collaborate with teams across Microsoft and with external partners to deliver performance optimizations for our customers. You will learn intricate details about how Azure works, what impacts performance across hardware and software boundaries, and how to create tests that can highlight both performance benefits and opportunities for improvement. In this role, you will actively collaborate with cloud, workload, and hardware experts. Our team is based in Redmond, WA. This is a hybrid work opportunity, and you have the option to work remotely.
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.
Responsibilities
Identify experiments, tools, and methodology to test various scenarios to triage performance improvement opportunities. Work with customers to understand performance requirements and configure performance measurements. Drive performance issues to resolution through partnership with other teams and vendors. Identify areas for potential improvement in both software and hardware. Clearly communicate the status of investigations, resolutions, and next steps or blockers. Contribute to requirement documents for hardware vendors and software partner teams.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications: Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 6+ years software or hardware industry experience OR Master's Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 4+ years software or hardware industry experience OR equivalent experience or capabilities. 3+ years technical experience in system performance engineering/optimizationOther 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:Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 8+ years software or hardware industry experience OR Master's Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 6+ years software or hardware industry experience OR Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field AND 1+ years of software or hardware industry experienceOR equivalent experience or capabilities. 2+ years of experience in system performance areas:Performance monitoring tools and analysis methods, such as Intel V-Tune or Linux perf.Performance-related computer architecture concepts, including page translation, caching, I/O subsystems, memory subsystems, virtualization, NUMA optimizations, voltage/frequency scaling, and power states.System software performance tuning, including compiler optimizations, operating system scheduling, hypervisors, memory management, and BIOS configurations.Benchmarking using industry standard and purpose-built workloads, including SPEC suites, TPC components, Redis, NGINX, and similar workloads.2+ years of experience in diverse software environments and programming languages:Operating systems, including Windows and Linux.Programming languages, including as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, and Python.Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs), including x86 and Arm.
Software Quality 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 $158,400 - $258,000 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.
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