Sr. Software Engineering

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer who is interested in distributed storage, ensuring high availability and consistent performance. Candidates who enjoy learning complex interactions between components and identifying underlying causes of degradation will have the opportunity to learn from domain experts and analyze patterns at global scale. We debug issues at the highest and lowest levels, from comparing statistical data across regions or time, down to source code or assembly analysis.

The Azure Managed Disk team are responsible for disks beneath Azure Virtual Machines, managing hundreds of thousands of servers which in turn are a fundamental building block for delivering a vast range of cloud services. To be successful, we must strive to be efficient in terms of resource dimensions including central processing unit (CPU), memory, input/output operations per second (IOPS), capacity, etc., and are constantly looking for how to best arrange and distribute usage while ensuring minimal disruption. We interact with physical hardware and implement logic to detect and recover from hardware faults, allowing cloud services to operate continually on imperfect systems.

This is a continually evolving space where new approaches are explored and evaluated, where we are constantly challenged by an exponentially growing fleet, and your analysis can set the direction for the next decades.

You will identify opportunities to monitor key aspects of system behavior, aggregate and observe metrics, build complex queries to draw connections between different systems, work with engineers on challenging problems and propose cross-team solutions, support teams in difficult debugging, and act as the final tier in customer support. To be successful in these areas, you must thrive while solving issues related to durability, availability, and concurrency for a distributed system. You will have an opportunity to make high-impact changes on a daily basis as you build a hyperscale storage system that may indirectly or directly be used daily by your friends and family.

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

• Leads investigation and analysis of complex distributed systems, tracing causation of faults.
• Leads identification of bottlenecks or load concentration, acting independently to mitigate issues while also defining automated algorithms to distribute load more effectively.
• Works across teams and organizations to establish algorithms and heuristics that are robust to degraded hardware or other recurring events.
• Determine and communicate patterns that represent areas for systemic improvement or provide efficient identification of known issues.
• Communicate with internal and external customers regarding opportunities to leverage Storage technologies in ways best suited to their needs.
• Holds accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), mentoring engineers across products/solutions, working on-call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
• Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale and shares knowledge with other engineers.

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ 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., Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR 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.

Software 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.

Microsoft is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We develop, license, and support a wide range of software products, services, and devices that help individuals and businesses realize their full potential.

Our flagship products include the Microsoft 365 productivity cloud, Windows operating system, Azure cloud platform, and Dynamics 365 business applications. We are also a leader in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, developer tools, and gaming through Xbox and Game Pass.

With operations in more than 190 countries and over 220,000 employees worldwide, Microsoft is committed to responsible innovation, inclusive economic growth, and sustainability. We work closely with governments, industries, and communities to ensure that technology serves the public good and helps address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

As we celebrate our 50th anniversary in 2025, we continue to look forward—investing in AI, cloud, and quantum computing to shape the future of work, education, and society at large scale.