Senior Firmware Validation Engineer

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

6d•$119,800 - $234,700

About The Position

Microsoft’s Silicon and Cloud Hardware Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) organization develops the infrastructure and foundational technologies that power Microsoft’s online businesses and Azure. Its Firmware Development team designs and develops server and rack infrastructure firmware, working with Microsoft product groups, industry partners, and researchers to develop server hardware solutions for cloud platforms. The team’s work covers firmware development and validation for server, silicon, and rack infrastructure, with an emphasis on Azure infrastructure and the MAIA and Cobalt product lines. The Senior Firmware Validation Engineer will coordinate integration, validation, and debugging of system software across server architecture domains, and help deliver networking solutions for AI training and inference platforms. The role partners across architecture, silicon, firmware, and software teams, contributes to platform-level issue resolution, and improves test coverage, release automation, and system-health reporting. The position offers the opportunity to own product delivery to Azure datacenters and contribute to reliable, scalable systems.

Requirements

Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field and 1+ year of technical engineering experience; or a master’s degree in one of these fields and 4+ years of technical engineering experience; or a bachelor’s degree in one of these fields and 5+ 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.
Ability to satisfy export-control eligibility requirements for access to controlled information, including providing proof of citizenship, U.S. residency, or other protected status; citizenship will be verified with a valid passport, with other documents accepted for lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees where applicable.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent industry experience.
8+ years of professional experience in embedded systems design or development, integration, validation, or system-level debugging.
Problem-solving, debugging, and troubleshooting skills.
Understanding or working experience with Ethernet layer 1 and layer 2, datacenter networking operations such as quality of service, network congestion and flow control, and networking switches.
Demonstrated experience in system-level integration, validation (including validation infrastructure setup), automation frameworks, and system software debugging.
Experience creating validation test plans, developing test content to meet those plans, and automating test execution.
Experience with firmware development and testing across multiple hardware test environments, such as boards, FPGA, emulation, and simulation.
Experience with system-level debugging, including customer issues, and understanding of production issue management and triage.
Knowledge of hardware debuggers such as JTAG, oscilloscopes, and logic analyzers.

Responsibilities

Coordinate integration, validation (including the validation environment), and debugging of system software across server architecture domains such as SoC firmware, networking, attestation, BMC, and Rack Manager.
Define and drive networking architectures and validation for AI training and inference platforms across scale-up and scale-out deployments.
Partner with architecture, silicon, firmware, and software teams to deliver validated networking solutions from pre-silicon through datacenter deployment.
Troubleshoot and debug platform-level issues, work toward becoming a point of contact for these issues, and ensure systematic issue closure for subsequent releases.
Collaborate with architects, firmware teams, program management, and component development teams on day-to-day operations and long-term roadmap improvements, sharing key learnings.
Explore and deploy methods to improve test coverage, release and test automation, and firmware release efficiency.
Create automated dashboards that reflect system health and quality for decision-making.