Senior Technical Support Engineer - Data Protection

MCAPS-Core accelerates customer outcomes and business growth. By uniting product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners around a common customer mission, we help customers realize value faster and turn innovation into measurable business impact. Through deep technical expertise and differentiated go-to-market execution, we win competitively, capture market share, and scale repeatable growth motions. We differentiate through value creation - delivering world-class, AI-powered customer experiences that accelerate adoption, strengthen loyalty, and create sustainable competitive advantage, driving growth that outpaces the market.

Within MCAPS - Core, the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization builds trust and confidence for every person and organization through delivering a seamless support experience. In CSS, we are powered by Microsoft’s AI technology to help consumers, businesses, partners, and more, resolve their issues quickly and securely, helping prevent future problems from occurring and achieving more from their Microsoft investment.

As a Support Escalation Engineer (SEE) for the Data Protection team, you serve as a frontline technical expert during Microsoft’s most sensitive identity and security incidents. You lead deep investigations, resolve complex customer-impacting issues, and provide the engineering rigor required to restore access, validate ownership, and unblock customers in high-risk scenarios. Your work combines advanced troubleshooting, strong security awareness, and high-judgment decision making to protect customers when they face compromise, lockouts, or critical access failures.

You collaborate closely with frontline agents, Engineering, identity specialists, and product teams to identify defects, clarify ambiguous situations, and prevent recurrence of systemic issues. You also strengthen Microsoft’s support ecosystem by mentoring engineers, contributing to readiness efforts, and sharing insights that improve tooling, documentation, and product behavior.

The Data Protection team operates globally and around the clock. Success in this role requires flexibility, a strong sense of ownership, and the ability to collaborate effectively across regions, time zones, and disciplines to deliver timely resolution of customer-critical issues.

Every investigation represents a customer who has lost access to critical systems, business operations, or administrative control of their environment. In this role, you help customers recover from some of their most challenging moments while protecting the integrity and security of the Microsoft ecosystem.

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.

Key Responsibilities:

• Exercise sound technical and security judgment when evaluating ambiguous or high-risk scenarios involving identity verification, ownership validation, access restoration, and potential compromise events.
• Investigate highly sensitive security and identity incidents while balancing customer experience, risk mitigation, compliance requirements, and platform protection objectives.
• Troubleshoot deeply technical identity and security issues across multi-component systems using logs, traces, telemetry, and diagnostic tooling.
• Review complex cases, validate technical details, identify defects or systemic patterns, and engage senior engineers or product teams when deeper engineering changes are required.
• Participate in technical triage, incident response, and swarming discussions, contributing investigative findings and helping accelerate resolution paths across globally distributed teams.
• Collaborate on cross-team and cross-product investigations, coordinating with partner support organizations, Engineering, and other CSS organizations as needed.
• Collaborate effectively across regions and time zones, partnering with engineers, partner support organizations, and stakeholders worldwide to resolve customer-critical issues and improve operational readiness.
• Participate in follow-the-sun support models, business-critical incident response activities, and other global support commitments, which may include coverage outside standard business hours, weekends, or regional holidays as required.
• Provide clear, timely updates that keep customers informed of case status, next steps, and expected timelines.
• Mentor new or developing engineers, supporting skills ramp, readiness content, and knowledge transfer across partner and FTE communities.
• Share best practices broadly, contribute to automation and case-deflection assets, and help enhance the quality and efficiency of the Data Protection support model.
• Identify process gaps, propose improvements, and partner with managers and engineering teams to refine workflows, documentation, and readiness materials.

Required Qualifications:
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology (IT), or related field AND 3+ years of technical support, technical consulting experience, or information technology experience 
     OR 5+ years of technical support, technical consulting experience, or information technology experience 
     OR equivalent experience

Language Qualification
English Language: confident in reading, writing and speaking.

Chinese Language: fluent in reading, writing and speaking.

Required Qualifications Include:  

• 5+ years of experience in technical support, escalation engineering, systems administration, security operations, or Tier-3 troubleshooting roles.
• Demonstrated experience in identity, security, access management, or support domains, including technologies such as Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance, Conditional Access, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), cloud security operations, or other high-risk customer security workflows.
• Demonstrated capability to resolve complex, multi-component technical issues through strong analytical, troubleshooting, and diagnostic skills.
• Professional written and verbal communication skills in both English and Chinese (Mandarin), with the ability to explain complex technical and non-technical concepts clearly to customers, partners, and internal stakeholders.
• Strong collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across engineering, support, and product organizations in a global environment.
• Demonstrated ability to make sound decisions in ambiguous, high-pressure situations involving customer security, identity, access management, or business continuity.
• Ability to manage conflict, maintain professionalism, and navigate sensitive customer interactions with empathy, composure, and sound judgment.
• A growth mindset, adaptability, and the ability to thrive in fast-paced, evolving environments where priorities, risks, and business needs may change rapidly.
• Familiarity with cloud security fundamentals, online privacy concepts, identity protection principles, and security-compromise response practices.Preferred Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s degree (B.A. or B.S.) in Computer Science, Information Security, Business, or a related field. 
• Microsoft certifications such as AI‑900, SC‑900, AZ‑900, or relevant industry-recognized security and compliance certifications.
• Professional proficiency in Japanese or Korean, including written and verbal communication, is highly desirable and will be considered a strong asset in supporting Microsoft's diverse global customer base.

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.