Senior Hardware Engineer - Interconnection

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 Cloud Hardware Systems Engineering (CHSE) 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 experienced 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 Senior Hardware Engineer to join the team. 

#SCHIE 

• Understand customer requirements and high-level architectural design, evaluate interconnect solutions available in the market, responsible for developing detailed specifications. 

• Specify mechanical and electrical requirements for high-speed interconnects.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (EE, ME, SI/PI, system architecture) to ensure co-design alignment. 

• Balance innovation with manufacturability, cost, and reliability to deliver robust, scalable solutions. 

• Lead or support design reviews, signal integrity (SI) and mechanical simulations, and prototyping. 

• Evaluate and select suppliers for connectors and cables.  

• Drive technical alignment and qualification with vendors, including DFM/DFT/DFR considerations. 

• Define test and inspection criteria for interconnect components.

• Ensure compliance with reliability standards and environmental requirements. 

• Support root cause analysis and continuous improvement for field and production issues. 

• Work with partner teams to create system level bring-up and end-to-end validation test plans, ensure complete coverage, guarantee execution. 

• Develop and maintain design guides, specifications, and recommended practices.  

Required Qualifications 

• Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 5+ years technical engineering experience OR equivalent experience.

• 5+ years’ experience in high-speed interconnection products development and/or projects execution.

• 5+ years’ experience in system level high-speed design and implementation (connector, cable, backplane and/or mid-plane) across the hardware development lifecycle. 

• 5+ years’ experience working across multiple disciplines (electrical, mechanical, thermal, manufacturing, system/rack integration, and/or data center infrastructure) to identify risks, drive discussions, detail system tradeoffs, and assess impact.

• Fundamental knowledge of the following hardware design principles: Computer Architecture, Electrical Engineering, Power Design, Signal Integrity. 

• Experience executing hardware validation and functional test plans.

• Hands-on using VNA, high-speed scopes, bus protocol analyzer, logic analyzers, etc..

• Experience working across disciplines and organizations.

• Demonstrated verbal and written communication and presentation skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Deep understanding of connector mechanics, cable assembly, and SI/ME tradeoffs.

• Knowledge of blind-mate connector systems, floating connector designs, and cable backplane architectures.

• Familiarity with AI infrastructure, hyperscale systems, or data center hardware. 

• Experience with PCIe Gen7 and/or 112G/224G PAM4 signaling and associated SI/PI challenges.

• Exposure to reliability testing (HALT/HASS), failure analysis, and quality control systems. 

• Experience debugging board and system level issues for Cloud Servers.

• Proficiency in simulation tools (HFSS, CST, SIwave) and mechanical CAD (Creo, SolidWorks). 

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.