The Principal Optical Network System Engineer will lead the architecture, engineering, productization, and deployment of optical interconnect solutions for next-generation AI and cloud infrastructure. This role is part of the Platform Systems Engineering team within Microsoft's Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering organization. The focus is on developing scalable optical products that meet performance, power, reliability, and cost goals. The engineer will collaborate across various teams to translate platform requirements into innovative optical technologies.

• Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 7+ years technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree in the same fields AND 8+ years technical engineering experience OR equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of experience with fiber optics, including related tools, devices, processes, design, deployment, operations, or manufacturing.
• 8+ years of experience designing, testing, validating, or troubleshooting optical interconnects, optical components, or end-to-end fiber links.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements.

• Define and drive networking architectures for AI training and inference platforms.
• Lead the integration, bring-up, and deployment of network hardware technologies.
• Define and execute validation strategies for AI networking infrastructure.
• Analyze and optimize AI fabric performance across distributed training and inference workloads.
• Drive qualification and deployment of next-generation networking technologies.
• Lead root-cause analysis of networking and AI fabric issues.
• Develop telemetry, diagnostics, automation, and fleet monitoring solutions.

• 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.