Lead Compute System Architect

Do you want to be at the forefront of innovating the latest hardware designs to propel Microsoft's cloud growth? Are you seeking a unique career opportunity that combines technical capabilities, cross-team collaboration, with business insight and strategy?

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 achieve our shared goals. In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Join the Systems Planning and Architecture (SPARC) team within Microsoft's Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure (AHSI) organization, the team behind Microsoft's expanding Cloud Infrastructure and for powering Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud" mission. Microsoft delivers 200+ online services to more than one billion individuals worldwide, and AHSI is the team behind our expanding cloud infrastructure. We deliver the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's cloud businesses including Microsoft Azure, Bing, MSN, Office 365, OneDrive, Skype, Teams and Xbox Live.

We are looking for a Lead Compute System Architect to join our team

• Drive pathfinding across server architectures, evaluating technical tradeoffs, platform readiness, ecosystem maturity, and workload fit across the x86, Arm, and RISC-V architectures.
• Define plans to reduce architecture and system software gaps for emerging compute platforms, including software bring-up, validation, and workload enablement.
• Build infrastructure software that can support multiple instruction set architectures, improving portability, maintainability, and long-term flexibility of platform software and workloads.
• Set roadmap direction across organizations by aligning silicon, system software, virtualization, cloud infrastructure, and workload priorities around Microsoft's long-term compute strategy.
• Define and drive specialized processors designed to offload and accelerate infrastructure tasks such as networking/storage/security/infrastructure management.
• Help shape workload port strategies, performance characterization plans, and software ecosystem investments needed to scale across diverse compute architectures.
• Driving architecture and ecosystem evolution to match Azure requirements, including performance, reliability, security, manageability, and fleet-level efficiency needs.
• Coordinate development across silicon, firmware, operating system, hypervisor, virtualization, cloud infrastructure, and performance teams to identify requirements, and accelerate adoption of new compute options.
• Lead architecture bring-up and hands-on debug activities spanning pre-silicon and post-silicon environments, including simulators, emulation platforms, lab systems, and early prototypes.
• Investigate platform issues across the stack, from architecture and firmware through OS, hypervisor, virtualization, drivers, and workload execution.
• Develop and communicate clear technical recommendations, pathfinding results, risk assessments, and execution plans to stakeholders and engineering leadership.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python 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.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven industry experience in computer architecture, server systems, platform engineering, or related domains, with deep understanding of modern datacenter compute platforms.
• Recognized technical leadership in at least one major server architecture, with broad cross-architecture knowledge spanning x86, Arm, and RISC-V.
• Understanding of operating systems, hypervisors, virtualization technologies, platform firmware, boot flows, and low-level system software.
• Understanding of I/O subsystem, I/O virtualization and interactions with confidential compute.
• Extensive experience with architecture bring-up, system debug, root-cause analysis, and cross-functional issue resolution in complex hardware-software environments.
• Hands-on experience with simulators, emulation environments, pre-silicon or virtual platforms, and early hardware bring-up workflows.
• Proven ability to analyze performance, compatibility, and software portability challenges across workloads and platform stacks.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical strategy across hardware and software disciplines, align senior stakeholders, and drive execution through data-driven analysis and communication.
• Experience applying AI driven methodologies and tools for high velocity software porting/tuning.
• Experience translating ambiguous early-stage opportunities into actionable engineering plans.
• Experience enabling or optimizing workloads across multiple ISAs or heterogeneous computing environments including virtualized environments.
• Familiarity with Windows operating system, cloud infrastructure software, VM platforms, containerized environments, and large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience collaborating with silicon vendors, internal architecture teams, compiler/toolchain teams, operating system and firmware developer, and open-source ecosystem partners.
• Knowledge of performance modeling, benchmarking, workload analysis, or platform readiness assessment methodologies.

Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $165,600 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 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.