Firmware Engineer II

Microsoft • Hillsboro, OR

21h

About The Position

Microsoft Silicon and Cloud Hardware Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) develops infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft’s online services and Azure. The Firmware Center of Excellence creates firmware that powers Microsoft Cloud servers and racks worldwide, with a focus on next-generation server, silicon, and rack infrastructure and securing Azure infrastructure. The Firmware Engineer II develops and maintains firmware for MAIA and Cobalt platforms, investigates and resolves firmware and reliability issues, and builds tools for analyzing failures across lab and fleet datasets. The role collaborates with firmware, silicon, platform, OS, and fleet teams and documents debugging procedures and findings.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field and at least 1 year of technical engineering experience; or a bachelor’s degree in one of these fields and at least 2 years of technical engineering experience; or equivalent experience.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.
• Eligibility to access export-controlled information; the candidate must provide proof of citizenship, U.S. residency, or other protected status, with citizenship verified using a valid passport. Applicable alternative documents may be used by lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• At least 3 years of professional experience in embedded-system design, development, integration, validation, or system-level debugging.
• Experience developing embedded firmware in C or C++.
• Experience debugging firmware or embedded systems using logs, source-level debugging, or hardware tools.
• Experience scripting for automation or engineering-data analysis.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain embedded firmware, low-level drivers, initialization flows, and diagnostic instrumentation for MAIA and Cobalt platforms.
• Investigate boot failures, crashes, hangs, and functional or reliability issues using source code, register state, logs, crash dumps, and hardware debug tools.
• Reproduce failures in lab environments and implement firmware fixes, workarounds, and regression tests.
• Develop scripts and reusable tools for telemetry collection, failure-signature extraction, and automated analysis across lab and fleet datasets.
• Use data analysis and approved AI-assisted tools to summarize evidence and identify patterns, validating conclusions against hardware and firmware behavior.
• Collaborate with firmware, silicon, platform, OS, and fleet teams to resolve issues and document reproducible debug procedures and lessons learned.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level