The Lead Compute System Architect role at Microsoft focuses on innovating hardware designs to support the growth of Azure's cloud infrastructure. The position is part of the Systems Planning and Architecture team within the Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure organization. The architect will drive technical evaluations and define strategies for emerging compute platforms while collaborating across various teams. This role emphasizes the importance of aligning technical capabilities with business insights to enhance Microsoft's cloud offerings.

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field.
• 8+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements.

• Drive pathfinding across server architectures, evaluating technical tradeoffs and workload fit.
• Define plans to reduce architecture and system software gaps for emerging compute platforms.
• Build infrastructure software that supports multiple instruction set architectures.
• Set roadmap direction by aligning silicon, system software, and workload priorities.
• Define and drive specialized processors designed to offload infrastructure tasks.
• Help shape workload port strategies and performance characterization plans.
• Coordinate development across silicon, firmware, operating system, and performance teams.
• Lead architecture bring-up and hands-on debug activities across environments.
• Investigate platform issues across the stack from architecture to workload execution.
• Develop and communicate clear technical recommendations and execution plans.

• Employees at Microsoft are often offered comprehensive, “world-class” benefits—including health and mental-wellness programs, competitive pay with bonuses and stock awards, and retirement/savings options. Time-off and flexibility are common, with generous vacation and holidays, parental and caregiver leave, and flexible work schedules, alongside learning support, employee resource groups, product discounts, and matching-gifts/volunteering programs. Specific benefits can vary by region.