Principal Platform Power & Performance Engineer

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In short

Microsoft is seeking an experienced Principal Platform Power & Performance Engineer to join the SCHIE team, focusing on the power and performance architecture of Azure Compute and AI infrastructure. This role involves analyzing and optimizing efficiency from silicon to datacenter infrastructure, influencing platform design, and driving improvements across fleet efficiency and capacity utilization.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end power and performance characterization of next-generation Azure compute platforms.
Analyze interactions between CPU/GPU utilization, memory, I/O, firmware, OS power management, thermals, and workload behavior.
Identify opportunities to improve performance per watt, idle/low-utilization efficiency, energy proportionality, rack power efficiency, and workload throughput.
Develop and evaluate dynamic power/performance-management strategies.
Profile cloud and AI workloads to understand energy consumption and identify optimization opportunities.
Partner with silicon vendors, OEMs, firmware teams, OS engineers, and Azure infrastructure teams to drive improvements.
Influence silicon features, BIOS/firmware policies, OS power management, and future hardware architecture.
Build telemetry and analysis methodologies connecting platform behavior with workload performance and infrastructure efficiency.
Diagnose complex performance and power issues across hardware, firmware, OS, drivers, accelerators, and workloads.
Translate findings into recommendations for fleet efficiency, capacity utilization, power provisioning, infrastructure cost, and platform roadmaps.
Provide technical leadership, define methodology, and drive ambiguous cross-organizational problems.

Requirements

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.
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including Microsoft Cloud Background Check.
Eligibility to access export-controlled information, requiring verification of citizenship or U.S. permanent residency/protected status.

Desired Qualifications

15+ years of relevant experience in server systems/platforms development and validation in computer architecture, systems engineering, platform performance, or power/performance engineering.
Deep understanding of modern server architecture including CPU microarchitecture and power states, memory subsystems, PCIe and high-speed I/O, BIOS/UEFI and firmware, OS/kernel power management, and thermal/cooling behavior.
Hands-on experience with platform performance analysis using tools such as Linux perf, hardware performance counters, tracing/profiling tools, telemetry systems, or equivalent Windows/Linux tooling.
Ability to design controlled experiments, interpret noisy system-level data, establish correlations, and distinguish workload effects from platform bottlenecks.
Experience debugging performance or power issues that cross multiple hardware/software layers.
Proven scripting and data-analysis skills using Python, PowerShell, Bash, Kusto, or similar technologies.
Excellent communication skills and the ability to translate detailed engineering analysis into decisions for architecture, product, and leadership audiences.
Experience in large-scale cloud or hyperscale infrastructure.
Experience with AMD, Intel, Arm, NVIDIA, or other modern CPU/GPU platforms.
Experience with GPU and AI/ML workload characterization.
Experience with power capping, DVFS, CPU/GPU power states, memory power management, or PCIe power management.
Experience with server/rack power modeling and telemetry.
Experience with AI training or inference performance.
Experience with performance-per-watt benchmarking.
Experience with firmware or BMC-based platform controls.
Experience with thermal and fan optimization.
Experience with workload-aware or utilization-aware power management.
Experience with capacity, rack-density, or datacenter power optimization.

Benefits

The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year.
For specific work locations within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, the base pay range is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Skills

PythonPowerShellBashKusto

#cloud infrastructure#power and performance#Azure#compute#AI infrastructure#silicon#servers#firmware#operating systems#datacenter

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