Senior Software Engineer - Azure Storage

OverviewMicrosoft Azure Storage is one of the world's largest, most distributed cloud storage platforms-already operating at Exascale and rapidly advancing toward Zettascale capacity. Our charter is to deliver secure, durable, and ubiquitously accessible storage with industry-leading performance. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Storage team sits at the forefront of this mission. We own the end-to-end storage stack that powers modern AI workloads-pushing for sub-millisecond latencies and massively higher Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) to meet the explosive demand of Large Language Model (LLM) inference and training. As a Senior Software Engineer - Azure Storage, you will design and build high-performance, scalable systems that form the foundation of AI-first cloud workloads. You'll work across the full stack-from low-latency data paths and distributed storage protocols to performance-tuned compute and metadata services. Your focus will be on unlocking new levels of throughput and efficiency to meet the demands of AI/ML training and inference at scale. This is a highly impactful role with broad visibility, requiring systems thinking, deep technical expertise, and a passion for innovation at the intersection of storage and AI.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.
ResponsibilitiesArchitect and implement critical components of the Azure Storage stack (front-end, metadata, data path, caching, replication, durability, observability). Drive low-latency and high-throughput designs-profiling hot paths, eliminating bottlenecks, and leveraging hardware offload (Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA)/Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK)/Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs)) where it matters. Lead design reviews, code reviews, and technical deep dives with partner teams across Azure Compute, Networking, and AI infrastructure. Own services through their full lifecycle: design development testing deployment site reliability and live-site response. Mentor engineers, influence engineering best practices, and raise the technical bar for performance-critical cloud services.