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 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 seasoned 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 Principal Optical Engineer to join the System Design team.

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Generally, this Principal Optical Engineer role will act as a subject matter expert and lead architect in rack-scale fiber-optic infrastructure and cabling driving planning, architecture, innovation, partnerships, and development.

• Develop comprehensive rack-scale fiber-optic management solutions and standards, including but not limited to fiber connectors, patch panels, fiber shuffle, and cable assemblies.

• Actively involve in all emerging state-of-the-art AI systems/platforms with optical contents inside racks.

• Own most of internal dev lifecycle documentation across proof of concept, product requirements, statement of works, EV/DV/PV, L10/L11 installation & build manual, and operational guidelines

• Partner with internal cross-functional teams, fiber optics suppliers and system integrators to ensure efficient, and reliable integration of fiber-optic infrastructure into compute and switch racks

• Manage and drive the suppliers to develop new fiber-optic building blocks to enable sustainable scaling of fiber-optic infrastructure for AI platforms

• Assist data center operation team on troubleshooting and remediation recommendations issues after production

• Drive the technology roadmap, technology/product readiness criteria, and intercept plans in the context of rack-scale fiber-optic infrastructure

• Fill the domain knowledge gaps in fiber optics across cross-functional teams

Required Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 7+ years technical engineering experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience
  • OR equivalent experience.

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:

• Doctorate Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years of technical engineering experience OR Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 8+ years of technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 12+ years of technical engineering experience OR equivalent experience.

• Proven experience in architecture, design, and/or implementation of high-density fiber-optic components and/or the passive fiber infrastructure for hyper-scale data centers, such as structural fiber cabling, advanced fiber connectors, cable assemblies, fiber shuffles, SMF/MMF

• Experience working directly with hyperscalers or rack-level system integrators is highly valued

• Proven understanding and insight of both active and passive optical interconnect technologies and associated supplier landscapes for hyper-scale cloud/AI infrastructure.

• Hands-on testing and validation experience in active and passive fiber optic components and end-to-end fiber links.

• The ability to conduct a systematic Failure Analysis to evaluate the cause of failures and define approaches for corrective actions, including knowledge of root cause analysis methodology.

• Knowledge of optical interconnects and L0-L2 data center networking, in particular for leading AI infrastructure

• Demonstrated cross‑functional leadership and communication skills—able to drive architecture decisions and tradeoffs with senior technical leaders.

• Proven analytical and problem-solving skills with a focus on performance optimization.

• Proven intellectual curiosity and a passion for challenging the status quo and driving disruptive innovation

• Knowledge and experience of Fiber Optics including related tools, devices, processes, design, operations, or manufacturing, etc.

• Knowledge of Optical Engineering and Optical Engineering concepts, testing procedures, standards, tools and appropriate analysis methods.