Senior Software Engineer

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

Microsoft Search & AI platform team delivers the cutting-edge infrastructure for Microsoft search and feeds experience which is used by billions of users. We are looking for a passionate platform developer to join us building the next generation of compute and storage fabric using in-house and open-source technologies. You will be hands-on in a massively scaled and distributed system. You will have the opportunity to work with cutting-edge cloud and machine learning technologies. Share accountability of a wide array of assets and be comfortable with learning a broad array of technologies. Design and implement features in a distributed environment using data to guide and measure success. Debug and mitigate incidents in live production environments. Participate in regular team scrums and communicate regularly and clearly with team members and leads. Look for opportunities to use open-source technologies in our service or to share learnings, services and tools we have created with Microsoft broadly or the open-source community. We are a fast-paced team with product releases every week. If you are self-motivated and want to make a large impact in the cloud serving area, then we are looking forward to meeting you! This is a core engineering team dealing with tens of thousands production servers, sub-millisecond latency and millions of RPS traffic. We develop advanced vector search algorithms, optimize model acceleration kernels, and build large scale distributed deep learning serving system. Our system leverages popular open-source components including ONNX, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Docker, Kafka, g-RPC, etc. We work on wide range of CPU and GPU hardware for high-performance serving. We are expanding our established deep learning platform to the largest scale in industry, in order to serve the growing demand of search volume, office intelligence and Dynamics experience. To do that, we are looking for a solid system engineer on performance analysis, components scaling-up, distributed system debugging, and new feature/algorithm development. Our projects collaborate with the Microsoft Research deeply. This is a great opportunity to work on a large production system with cutting-edge technology innovation. 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. Starting January 26, 2026, Microsoft AI (MAI) employees who live within a 50- mile commute of a designated Microsoft office in the U.S. or 25-mile commute of a non-U.S., country-specific location are expected to work from the office at least four days per week. This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
10+ years of experience in building high-performance computing systems, parallel or distributed systems (e.g., in open-source projects or production systems).
Experience on high performance computing (e.g., cache/memory optimization, high-performance GPU programming, compiler-based optimization, fine-grained parallel library and runtime) or distributed systems (e.g., communication optimization, network architecture design, network programming).
Theory and practice on the approximate nearest neighborhood search.
Experience on building Machine Learning/Deep Learning systems.
Experience on performance analysis and optimization for both CPUs and GPUs, as well as good understanding on software-hardware codesign.

Responsibilities

Share accountability of a wide array of assets and be comfortable with learning a broad array of technologies.
Design and implement features in a distributed environment using data to guide and measure success.
Debug and mitigate incidents in live production environments.
Participate in regular team scrums and communicate regularly and clearly with team members and leads.
Look for opportunities to use open-source technologies in our service or to share learnings, services and tools we have created with Microsoft broadly or the open-source community.