Principal Hardware Architect - Optical Technologies Job at Microsoft in Mountain

Principal Hardware Architect - Optical Technologies

United States, California, Mountain View

Overview
Do you want to be at the forefront of innovating the latest hardware and systems designs to propel Microsoft's cloud growth? Are you seeking a unique career opportunity that combines technical capabilities, cross team collaboration, with business insight and strategy? Join our Leading-Edge Architecture Pathfinding (LEAP) team within the Strategic Planning and Architecture (SPARC) organization in Azure Hardware Systems & Infrastructure (AHSI). AHSI is the team behind Microsoft's expanding cloud business, responsible for delivering the hardware systems and infrastructure for cloud computing across Microsoft Azure, Bing, MSN, Office 365, OneDrive, Skype, Teams and Xbox Live. The SPARC organization is responsible for strategy, planning and architecture pathfinding, and manages Azure's hardware roadmap from architecture concept through production for Microsoft's current and future on-line services. The LEAP team within SPARC is at the forefront of systems architecture and technology pathfinding spanning compute, memory, storage, network and system interconnects. Drawing on deep insights of workloads, emerging technology trends, and focused industry engagements, LEAP team's charter is to define and evaluate novel systems architecture innovations through hardware/software co-design and advance them through technical readiness for productization. The LEAP team is seeking a Principal Hardware Architect - Optical Technologies with a focus on driving the adoption of emerging optical technologies into AI-centric datacenters. The candidate is expected to evaluate alternative interconnect technologies and identify innovative ways of applying them to new systems architectures. Technologies in scope include SerDes and die-to-die electrical interfaces, optical transceivers, optical integration into Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) packages, optical circuit switches, lasers etc. The candidate may extend existing methodologies that account for System Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), loss budget, power and reliability to include proposed optical components and drive Proof-of-Concept definitions to create line-of-sight to deployment.

Success in this role requires:
Listening to those who operate Azure and their customers to identify current and emerging problems. Identifying promising technologies to address problems that are relevant for Azure business, engage with ecosystem partners, and derisking productization via capable proof-of-concepts. Working across organizational boundaries with roadmap planners, product architects, and hardware and software engineering teams to land promising solutions in Azure data centers.

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
Identify optical technologies, quantify their value and prioritize them for future datacenter usages.
Recommend a product intercept strategy based on conducting comprehensive trade-off analysis of optical technology options.
Propose Proof of Concept (POC) / prototyping frameworks for the rigorous evaluation of optical technologies.
Engage with optical technology vendors and conduct detailed analysis of competing technologies.
Educate / disseminate technology directions to Microsoft's internal stakeholders on optical foundations and fundamental directions.
Represent Microsoft's directions to industry and academia through leading conferences.

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