Critical Infrastructure Platform Engineering Manager

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day and we need you as a Senior Critical Infrastructure Platform Engineering (CIPE) Manager.  

Microsoft’s Cloud Operations & Innovation (CO+I) is the engine that powers our cloud services. As a Senior (CIPE) Platform Engineering Manager you will perform a key role in delivering the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's online services including Bing, Office 365, Xbox, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform. You will manage a team that is responsible for the design, engineering and operation of the CIPE infrastructure across our unified global datacenters; managing the demand planning and capacity utilization; and responsible for running the physical infrastructure (including supply chain, hardware, power, security, and workflow teams). We emphasize automation, data driven engineering, cost-effectiveness, and environmental sustainability. This opportunity will allow you to join and manage a team of Platform Engineers who are passionate about designing, building and operating the world's most advanced cloud infrastructure. You will work on cutting-edge technologies and projects that enable Microsoft to deliver innovative solutions and services to our customers while collaborating with other teams across the company and learning from the best in the industry. If you are looking for a challenging and rewarding career, this is the role for you. This is a flexible work opportunity role offering remote work from home. 

Our infrastructure is comprised of a large global portfolio of more than 100 datacenters and 1 million servers. Our foundation is built upon and managed by a team of subject matter experts working to support services for more than 1 billion customers and 20 million businesses in over 90 countries worldwide.   

With environmental sustainability and optimization at the forefront of our datacenter design and operations, we continue to grow and evolve as we meet the ever-changing business demands that hold Microsoft as a world-class cloud provider.   

Do you want to empower billions across the world? Come and join us in CO+I and be at the forefront of the action!  

Required Qualifications:   

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 8+ years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, service engineering, or systems engineering
  • OR equivalent experience.

Background Check 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: 

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 8+ years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, service engineering, or systems engineering
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 3+ years technical experience working with large-scale cloud or distributed systems.
• 3+ years people management experience.
• Management Information Systems (MIS), Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE)/Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD), or other Engineering Certifications.
• 3+ years’ experience working\supporting large scale production datacenters

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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People Management and Support

• Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
• Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
• Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
• Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

Technical Knowledge and Expertise 

• Develops end-to-end expertise in service and/or system design, interactions between technology layers and components, functions of infrastructure, and dependencies at scale. Develops team's end-to-end technical expertise, regularly identifying skill gaps and raising the collective bar on the team's skill set in alignment with industry standards. Takes ownership of service design by driving efforts within an organization to identify, define, recommend, and build optimal configurations of technology solutions with consideration for cost management. Adjusts configurations and defines infrastructures to improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and/or performance of supported products and services. Leverages technical expertise to identify and design, deliver, and operate solutions across organizations. Drives reviews with the engineering teams that develop and/or manage services, identifying opportunities for efficiencies in operations and sharing learnings and recommendations across engineering teams working on related services within their organization.
• Guides teams to stay current in knowledge and expertise as the technology landscape evolves, maintaining awareness of industry norms. Uses knowledge to drive the adoption of new solutions across engineering teams working with related products within an organization. Makes expertise available to others through sharing, coaching, conferences, and other means to drive improvements across teams.
• Provide Subject Matter Expertise in the deployment of various platform technologies at scale (Windows OS, Linux OS, Hyper-V, Active Directory, DNS, PowerShell scripting, data protection technologies and more) and support high priority needs of the business on a variety of special projects which often involve expedited deliverables, operational agility, and impact to operational functions.
• Perform technical analysis and lead the design architecture of critical infrastructure platform plans for the enterprise, analyzing platform & security requirements of the business and architect solutions that include highly available and resilient designs.
• Own and drive technical roadmap and strategy, through effective collaboration with architects, engineers, and senior leaders.

Operational Excellence 

• Support platform infrastructure, ensure SLAs and KPIs are met and maintained, maintain & improve security posture of environment, execute OS and firmware patching provide 24/7/365 service and infrastructure operations support, maintain compliance, support builds and deployments, end of life refreshes, and service optimization.
• Execute continuous improvement in the environment to automate manual processes, improve security, availability, and overall support for critical infrastructure in the environment.
• Manages teams of engineers to implement reliable, scalable, and high-performance solutions across teams. Contribute to design documents. Own implementation and rollback plans. Maintain quality checklist and related documentation, unblocking as needed.
• Holds the team accountable for creating, monitoring, and taking action on telemetry data and provides guidance on telemetry analytics to better identify patterns that reveal errors and unexpected problems that are affecting the system availability, reliability, performance, and/or efficiency. Manages the development of scripts and/or automation across a team and leverages an understanding of solutions to define, develop, measure, track, change, and improve the quality of telemetry pipelines that support automated monitoring and incident response.
• Holds team accountable for participation in on-call rotations and manages teams of Service Engineers responding to incidents to identify the level of impact, troubleshoot issues, and deploy appropriate fixes to resolve root cause(s) and prevent incident recurrence across related products. Ensures that Service Engineers within their organization have the technical knowledge and resources required to respond to incidents and make difficult decisions based on business impact. Ensures relevant engineering teams, stakeholders, leaders are alerted to customer impacting issues. Ensures major issues are escalated to other teams as needed. Ensures postmortems are conducted. Ensures key details related to incidents and their resolution are shared through post-mortem reports and regular review meetings. Provides clarity during incidents, helps determine impact and define the scope of severity, and facilitates development of incident response and resolution guidance.
• Holds team accountable for understanding and following prescriptive guidance for security, privacy, and compliance standards in alignment with direction from the business and technical experts. Develops team's compliance awareness by conducting training and disseminating relevant information. Guides team to identify patterns of violations and implement automations for prevention. Works with security, privacy, and compliance teams to identify and address relevant security, privacy, and compliance issues across teams.

Project Management

• Lead and manage platform engineering projects from inception to completion using Agile methodologies and DevOps-based tools, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and priorities.
• Oversee sprint planning, backlog grooming, daily stand-ups, and manage timelines and budgets, ensuring effective collaboration and communication within the team.

Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing 

• Drives collaboration across teams by promoting the open exchange of information, resolving issues within and beyond their immediate team, managing conflict and teamwork challenges, and removing barriers to enable teams to quickly shift priorities without losing productivity. Identifies and includes all stakeholders in decisions and represents their organization with partners, customers, and external stakeholders, maintaining active engagement so issues can be resolved and mutual objectives are met. Ensures information is systematically and clearly communicated across teams.
• Facilitates sharing of insights and best practices that can be applied to improve development and operations across related sets of systems, platforms, and/or products. Continues to develop their understanding of insights and best practices through interactions with more experienced Service Engineers, members of product engineering teams, and other resources (e.g., conferences, brown bags, wikis, documentation). Mentors and coaches other engineers to help them identify and propose relevant solutions.

Other

• Embody our culture and values.