Senior Software Engineer - Optical Network Agents & Automation Platforms

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Azure serves as the foundational platform powering this mission, with the Global Azure Optical Network at its heart. Our team's purpose is operational excellence in managing and automating this global network, which powers everything on Azure—from cloud services and Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) traffic to core Microsoft offerings like Teams, Xbox, Office, Bing, and OpenAI's Artificial Intelligence (AI) models.

We run one of the largest and most sophisticated fiber-optic networks globally, and your role as a Senior Software Engineer - Optical Network Agents & Automation Platforms is crucial. You’ll build services, tools, and automation to manage global datacenter fiber operations, fiber maintenances, hardware diagnostics, and network recovery. This role offers an exciting chance to tackle a unique class of complex operational challenges solvable only through advanced AI agents and innovative automation platforms.

Our stack includes platforms like Temporal our own custom agent frameworks, and we're continuously innovating to build powerful AI-driven automation systems. This is an ideal opportunity for smart, technical, and driven engineers who want to move beyond foundational work into groundbreaking, impactful projects at unprecedented scale.

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.

Responsibilities

• Understand and define complex network operational problems, designing software-driven solutions.
• Build and enhance autonomous AI agent platforms, integrating human-in-the-loop capabilities, and onboarding these agents into various operational scenarios.
• Design and implement observability and management interfaces to efficiently operate and manage AI agents.
• Write high-quality code, perform rigorous code reviews, and actively prototype new systems and AI agent functionalities.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to ensure comprehensive solution development and implementation.
• Continuously expand and optimize AI agent workflows, enhancing platform capabilities and operational reliability.
• Validate solutions through thorough testing and performance monitoring, ensuring robust operational performance.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years technical experience in network design, development, and automation 
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or related field AND 4+ years technical experience in network design, development, and automation. 
  • OR Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 3+ years technical experience in network design, development, and automation 
  • OR Doctorate Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field. 

Other Requirements:

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: 
• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 11+ years technical experience in network design, development, and automation 
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or rel