Senior Principal Hardware Engineer

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

1d • $165,600 - $296,400

About The Position

Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) powers Microsoft’s expanding cloud infrastructure and supports the company’s online businesses and Azure platform with server and data center infrastructure, security and compliance, operations, globalization, and manageability solutions. The Hardware, Infrastructure Management, and Fundamentals Engineering (HIFE) team helps define and deliver operational measures of success for hardware manufacturing, improving planning, quality, delivery, scale, and sustainability for Microsoft cloud hardware.

The Senior Principal Hardware Engineer will provide technical leadership in hardware quality, supplier management, and complex issue resolution. The role focuses on data center hardware quality, especially GPU subsystem failure analysis, and includes hands-on debugging at global data centers, managing quality deliverables across new product introduction (NPI) builds, and ensuring quality requirements are addressed throughout hardware change management. The engineer will work with internal and external partners, data centers, development groups, and suppliers to improve reliability and manufacturing quality.

Requirements

• Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience; or a master's degree in one of these fields and 9+ years; or a bachelor's degree in one of these fields and 11+ years; 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

• Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, System Engineering, or a related field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience; or a master's degree in one of these fields and 12+ years; or a bachelor's degree in one of these fields and 15+ years; or equivalent experience.
• Patent or a track record of engineering excellence.
• 12+ years of experience with modern server architectures, including GPU and GPU system hardware, memory or CPU, and methods for failure analysis, debugging, or validation.
• 12+ years of proven success leading resolution of critical quality issues across data centers.
• 8+ years of system-level server debugging, with understanding of power, systems, drivers, workloads, and network environments.
• 3+ years of direct GPU-related engineering experience in issue debugging and test log review.
• Experience with liquid cooling systems in data centers.
• Leadership skills and ability to collaborate with diverse teams and drive a call to action.
• Experience filtering debug data, such as telemetry and logs, to identify and investigate hardware failure signatures.
• Experience using AI tooling and agentic approaches to scale debugging and data management.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership on complex quality solutions with internal and external partners.
• Use AI tooling and agentic approaches to scale debugging and data management.
• Drive continuous improvement based on root cause analysis and identified opportunities.
• Develop and implement a supplier quality management strategy to ensure data center hardware meets high quality standards.
• Work across data centers, development groups, and suppliers to resolve critical and high-severity hardware and software/firmware issues.
• Conduct hands-on and virtual debugging in global data centers, with a focus on GPU subsystem failure analysis.
• Manage multiple NPI builds and manufacturing quality phase-gate deliverables throughout the engineering development lifecycle, from concept through production readiness.
• Establish Critical-to-Quality performance metrics to measure and improve product quality.
• Represent quality in the hardware change management process and ensure quality requirements are considered and met.

Benefits

• Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation; additional benefits and pay information is available through the Microsoft careers website.

What This Job Offers

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