Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) in the Microsoft 365 Growth + Incubation engineering team, you will work hands-on with customers and partners to accelerate the adoption of Copilot solutions.
In this role, you will engage in complex and ambiguous technical scenarios where existing guidance may be incomplete, applying strong engineering and architectural judgment to help customers and partners design secure, scalable, and effective agentic solutions. Your work will center on unblocking technical friction, validating design decisions, and enabling sustained adoption.
You will apply software engineering and systems architecture skills to guide technical decision-making, explore design tradeoffs, and validate approaches through hands-on experimentation, proof-of-concept work, and example implementations. You will work closely with customer and partner engineering teams to accelerate learning, contribute to reference architectures and reusable design patterns, and ensure solutions align with Microsoft best practices, security expectations, and Responsible AI requirements.
You will join a collaborative engineering team within the Microsoft 365 Growth & Incubation organization, working in a One Microsoft model across product, engineering, and field teams. The team culture values curiosity, accountability, and continuous learning, and provides opportunities to grow technical depth and influence over time.
This position is based at the Redmond campus with 3 days per week work in the office and 2 days per week work from home. Relocation assistance is available.
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.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Math, Business, or related field AND 4+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

• Demonstrated ability to independently design and reason about complex, distributed, enterprise-grade systems, including integrations across cloud, data, and application layers
• Solid hands-on engineering experience, with the ability to write, review, and reason about code to validate architectural decisions and unblock complex technical problems
• Demonstrated ability to lead architectural decision-making, translating customer business requirements into secure, scalable technical architectures
• Experience leading technical engagements with customers or partners, operating with a high degree of autonomy in ambiguous problem spaces
• Proven ability to lead technical discussions with senior technical and business stakeholders, influencing outcomes through technical judgment and evidence

Responsibilities

• Lead solution architecture for agent-based Copilot solutions from discovery through deployment readiness, ensuring designs are secure, scalable, and fit for real-world adoption
• Develop and contribute to reference architectures, extensibility frameworks, and reusable design templates that can be applied across customers and partners
• Work side by side with customer and partner developers during sprints, build cycles, and design reviews to unblock technical challenges and accelerate progress
• Write, review and validate code, including performance considerations, reliability, and deployment readiness, to de-risk architectural decisions
• Lead structured validation and user acceptance activities, synthesizing technical findings and providing prioritized signals back to Microsoft teams
• Identify integration gaps and architectural risks, guiding solution design toward secure, maintainable, and scalable patterns
• Coach and mentor customer and partner architects and delivery engineers, helping build long-term technical capability and confidence

What This Job Offers

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