Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) is the team behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” mission. SCHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's over 200 online businesses including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Teams, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform globally with our server and data center infrastructure, security and compliance, operations, globalization, and manageability solutions. Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for passionate engineers to help achieve that mission.
As Microsoft's cloud business continues to grow the ability to deploy new offerings and hardware infrastructure on time, in high volume with high quality and lowest cost is of paramount importance. To achieve this goal, the Host Services team is instrumental in defining and delivering operational measures of success for hardware manufacturing, improving the planning process, quality, delivery, scale and sustainability related to Microsoft cloud hardware. We are looking for engineers with a dedicated passion for customer focused solutions, insight and industry knowledge to envision and implement future technical solutions that will manage and optimize the Cloud infrastructure.
We are looking for a Firmware Engineer to join the team.
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
- Develop and maintain firmware and driver solutions for Microsoft custom silicon platforms, including MAIA (AI accelerator) and COBALT (general-purpose compute), deployed across the Azure fleet.
- Contribute across all phases of the product lifecycle, from architecture and design through silicon bring-up, validation, manufacturing, and productization.
- Design and develop key firmware components, including driver interfaces, system libraries for SoC bring-up, low-level hardware protocols, and platform features.
- Participate in firmware architecture and technical design reviews, ensuring scalable, reliable, and high-performance solutions for Microsoft custom silicon platforms.
- Drive hardware-software integration efforts to enable new silicon capabilities and accelerate feature deployment across Azure infrastructure.
- Collaborate closely with silicon, board electrical, and hardware engineering teams to design, enable, and deliver new platform capabilities for Azure infrastructure.
- Partner with operating system and software platform teams to integrate and deploy new technologies and features across the Azure fleet.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 1+ year(s) technical engineering experience
- OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 2+ years technical engineering experience
- OR equivalent experience.
- 2+ years of experience designing and developing firmware solutions. Experience with UEFI and ARM Trusted Firmware (ARM-TF).
- 2+ years of experience developing software in C, C++, and Rust, with the ability to deliver maintainable, high-quality production software.
- 2+ years of experience with one or more industry-standard interfaces and protocols such as PCIe, I2C, SPI, USB, and UART.
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:
- Experience with ARM64 SoCs and Armv8 architecture, including boot flows, trusted firmware, and system initialization, is a plus.
- Familiarity with AI-driven software engineering practices that improve developer productivity and software quality.
- Experience using AI-assisted and agentic development tools to accelerate issue triage, debugging, root-cause analysis, and feature development.
- Proven ability in problem-solving, debugging, and troubleshooting skills, with experience diagnosing and resolving complex hardware-software integration issues.
- Effective collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across silicon, hardware, operating system, and platform software teams.
- Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field OR Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ years technical engineering experience with coding OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years technical engineering experience with coding OR equivalent experience.
#SCHIE
Firmware Engineering IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $102,100 - $202,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $133,800 - $219,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.
Skills Required
- Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field plus 1+ year of technical engineering experience; or bachelor’s degree in a related field plus 2+ years of technical engineering experience; or equivalent experience.
- 2+ years of experience designing and developing firmware solutions.
- Experience with UEFI and ARM Trusted Firmware.
- 2+ years of software development experience in C, C++, and Rust.
- 2+ years of experience with industry-standard interfaces or protocols such as PCIe, I2C, SPI, USB, or UART.
- Ability to meet Microsoft Cloud Background Check and applicable customer or government security screening requirements.
- Experience with ARM64 SoCs and Armv8 architecture, including boot flows, trusted firmware, and system initialization.
- Familiarity with AI-driven software engineering practices.
- Experience using AI-assisted and agentic development tools for issue triage, debugging, root-cause analysis, and feature development.
- Strong problem-solving, debugging, and troubleshooting skills involving hardware-software integration.
- Effective collaboration and communication skills across silicon, hardware, operating system, and platform software teams.
- Doctorate plus technical engineering experience; or master’s degree plus 3+ years of technical coding experience; or bachelor’s degree plus 5+ years of technical coding experience; or equivalent experience.
Microsoft Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Microsoft and has not been reviewed or approved by Microsoft.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is presented as broadly competitive overall, with clear role/level/location variation and an emphasis on using posted ranges and band information for apples-to-apples comparisons.
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Retirement Support — Retirement benefits are described as a standout, highlighted by a strong 401(k) match structure and immediate vesting, plus additional plan features for tax-advantaged saving.
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Parental & Family Support — Family-oriented benefits are portrayed as a meaningful strength, with substantial paid parental leave and added supports like back-up care and adoption/surrogacy assistance.
Microsoft Insights
What We Do
At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create. Today, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world.
