Director, Hardware Strategy and Planning

Do you want to be at the forefront of innovating the latest hardware designs to propel Microsoft’s cloud growth? Are you seeking a unique career opportunity that combines both technical capabilities, cross team collaboration, with business insight and strategy?  

Join our Strategic Planning and Architecture (SPARC) team within Microsoft’s Azure Hardware Systems & Infrastructure (AHSI) organization and be a part of the organization behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” mission. 

Microsoft delivers more than 200 online services to more than one billion individuals worldwide and AHSI is the team behind our expanding cloud infrastructure. We deliver the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's cloud businesses including Microsoft Azure, Bing, MSN, Office 365, OneDrive, Skype, Teams and Xbox Live.   

The SPARC organization manages Azure’s hardware roadmap from architecture concept through production for all of Microsoft’s current and future on-line services.  Well-defined and executed strategic planning ensures products meet the requirements for performance, features, and time-to-market. The ability to draw insights from a deep understanding of the cloud Hardware Infrastructure landscape and industry trends is critical in informing the roadmap and planning decisions. Deep technical understanding of our hardware architecture, workload modeling and analysis are necessary to making informed, data-driven decisions. Our hardware technology pathfinding work helps keep our product portfolio competitive by maturing new concepts for productization. Together these functions are able to create a strategic hardware and technology roadmap. 

As Director, Hardware Strategy and Planning, you will engage with technology providers, understand their product portfolio and roadmap, work with internal partners and strategize how new memory technology solutions intercept Azure’s hardware infrastructure roadmap. The role will involve driving future roadmap and requirements with technology providers that enable the growth of the Azure cloud business and give it a competitive edge over other cloud service providers. Join our SPARC team and be a part of the world’s fastest growing cloud service! 

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. In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day. 

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day. 

Responsibilities

• Work with technology providers, understand their portfolios, partner with engineering and business groups and drive a competitive and executable hardware roadmap strategy for Azure hardware infrastructure.  

• Deep dive into memory vendors’ technology offerings, quantitively compare technology options and produce recommendations and strategies that give a unique edge to Azure hardware infrastructure.  

• Partner with business units and engineering team members to gather and define future requirements, server design objectives and business goals.

• Perform roadmap scenario modeling, financial modeling, and market analysis for the recomme