Member of Technical Staff, Microsoft Robotics (Platform)

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

2d • $85,400 - $219,200

About The Position

Microsoft’s Discovery and Quantum (MDQ) division develops advanced AI, cloud-enabled capabilities, and strategic technologies. Within MDQ, Microsoft Robotics builds technologies that enable people, robots, and AI agents to collaborate. The team is developing an integrated platform for physical intelligence, combining robotics software and AI capabilities, teaming experiences, agentic workflows, trustworthy test and evaluation, and customer-focused validation to help robotics solutions progress from experimentation to reliable, scaled deployment.

The Member of Technical Staff contributes to the design, development, and testing of core Microsoft Robotics platform infrastructure. Components include SDKs, cloud services, edge runtimes, developer tooling, and agent orchestration layers that support people, AI agents, and robots across mission workflows. The role builds well-scoped features with guidance from experienced engineers, explores design options, and develops robotics software systems skills while helping bring autonomy capabilities to life.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline, with proven coding experience in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, 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.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field with proven coding experience in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python; or a bachelor’s degree in a related field plus at least 2 years of technical engineering experience with coding; or equivalent experience.
• Experience contributing to software projects involving developer tools, SDKs, APIs, or distributed systems through coursework, personal projects, internships, research, open-source contributions, or professional work.
• Experience coding in one or more of C++, Rust, Go, or Python, with interest in systems-level components, tooling, data pipelines, or ML integration and an emphasis on clear, maintainable, testable code.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, including exposure to agentic coding workflows and reviewing, testing, and validating AI-generated code.
• Ability to compare and communicate design options, considering latency, reliability, safety, and maintainability, and to incorporate feedback.
• Familiarity with cloud services and distributed systems concepts such as microservices, containerized workloads (e.g., Kubernetes), APIs, or CI/CD; Azure exposure is a plus.
• Familiarity with API design and integration concepts such as versioning and backward compatibility, and interest in learning how multi-tenant platforms support internal developers and external partners.
• Familiarity with robotics middleware (ROS/ROS2), real-time systems, or edge computing, and interest in learning how latency, reliability, and safety requirements affect software deployed to physical systems.
• Understanding of agentic AI architectures, including agent orchestration, tool use, multi-agent coordination, and human-in-the-loop workflows, and their application to physical systems.
• Familiarity with ML infrastructure such as model serving (ONNX, TensorRT, Triton), training orchestration, experiment tracking, or feature stores, particularly for deploying learned models to edge devices.
• Exposure to simulation tools, digital twins, or automated testing, and interest in using physics-based simulation to validate robotics software and catch regressions.

Responsibilities

• Implement and test features in robotics SDKs, cloud-hosted APIs, edge runtimes, and agent orchestration frameworks, enabling developers and partners to compose autonomy capabilities into deployable mission workflows.
• Contribute to platform extensibility and integration features, helping integrate, version, test, and deploy autonomy capabilities, models, partner hardware systems, and customer-specific logic across cloud and edge environments.
• Develop and test robotics lifecycle data infrastructure components, including instrumentation libraries, data acquisition services, human-in-the-loop workflows, and dataset versioning and curation pipelines; apply established data-quality practices to real-world and synthetic or simulated data.
• Apply established security, compatibility, and performance practices to assigned features, including cloud-edge authentication and authorization, API versioning and backward compatibility, and multi-tenant isolation; help test and investigate latency against real-time robotic control-loop requirements.
• Improve developer experience by contributing CLI features, SDK functionality, documentation, sample code, and inner-loop workflow improvements, incorporating feedback from internal developers and external partners.
• Use AI-assisted development tools and agentic coding workflows to improve productivity and software quality; contribute agent-based engineering solutions that automate repetitive tasks, support investigation and root-cause analysis, and strengthen testing, validation, and operational reliability. Follow team standards for reviewing and verifying AI-generated changes.
• Collaborate with autonomy, simulation, and evaluation teams to understand requirements and implement and test assigned platform primitives, such as compute orchestration, data routing, model serving, and experiment tracking, supporting ML training, sim-to-real transfer, and online evaluation needs.
• Participate in technical design and code reviews, contribute design documentation for assigned features, incorporate feedback, follow standards for code quality, testing, and operational readiness, and communicate progress, questions, and blockers.
• Embody Microsoft’s Culture and Values.

What This Job Offers

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