Principal Server Performance Architect - Microsoft Azure

Get ready to operate at hyperscale!

We are building new systems to optimize the millions of server nodes underlying the Microsoft Azure cloud. You will be part of a dynamic and collaborative team chartered to understand and improve how hardware and software ingredients come together to form our Azure virtual machine (VM) products. Our work includes optimizing fleet performance, benchmark construction, competitive comparisons, working with customers, influencing platform designs, and developing analysis methods that leverage AI.

As a Principal Server Performance Architect in this role, you will anticipate, locate, and solve VM performance issues. You will find opportunities for improvement through internal testing as well as by working directly with Azure customers to understand their use cases. You will collaborate with Microsoft internal teams, the open-source community, and hardware vendors to deliver performance optimizations that benefit Azure customers. This opportunity will allow you to get deep into virtualized cloud performance plus help shape emerging usage models like bare metal instances. Your experience with server performance will allow you to guide others, multiplying your impact. Our team is based in Redmond, WA. This is a hybrid work opportunity and you have the option to work remotely. 

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

• Identify experiments, tools, and methodology to test various scenarios to triage performance improvement opportunities.
• Work with customers to understand performance requirements and configure performance measurements.
• Drive performance improvements to resolution through partnership with other teams and vendors.
• Clearly communicate the status of investigations, resolutions, and next steps or blockers.
• Contribute to requirement documents for HW vendors and SW partner teams.
• Guide other engineers working on performance tests, investigations, and analysis methods.

Other:

• Embody our Culture and Values

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 6+ years software industry experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 8+ years software industry experience
  • OR equivalent experience or capabilities.
• 6+ years technical experience in hardware system performance engineering/optimization.

Other Qualifications:

• 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:

• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field AND 8+ years of technical engineering experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field AND 12+ years of technical engineering experience
  • OR Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field AND 6+ years of technical engineering experience
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Deep familiarity with
  • performance monitoring tools and analysis methods (e.g. V-Tune, Linux perf),
  • AND performance-related computer architecture, including page translation, caching, I/O, DRAM, virtualization, NUMA optimizations, voltage/frequency scaling, power states, etc,