This role pays more than
50%
of similar roles. Most pay
$144,362–$214,562
— the shaded band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$177k
versus about
$179k
for comparable roles.
Based on 240 similar postings.
Employer
About Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is a global technology leader producing software, hardware, and cloud services including Windows, Office 365, Azure cloud platform, Xbox gaming, and Surface devices. Industry: Software & Cloud Computing
Microsoft currently has
653 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$119,800–$234,700
across 617 roles with salary data.
The Senior Network HW System Engineer joins the Platform Systems Engineering team to develop, integrate, validate, and deploy networking solutions for next-generation MAIA AI systems. This role focuses on building high-performance scale-up and scale-out networking for AI training and inference platforms at the intersection of networking hardware, custom silicon, and hyperscale infrastructure. Day-to-day responsibilities include driving the bring-up of switches, NICs, PHYs, MAC/PCS, SerDes, and optical components while collaborating with firmware and software teams to resolve complex integration issues. The candidate will utilize technologies such as PAM4 SerDes, OSFP/QSFP-DD, LPO, LRO, CPO, and silicon photonics to characterize fabric performance including bandwidth and latency. Key technical skills include experience with Ethernet-based infrastructure, Linux, telemetry, and automation to solve problems related to AI workload communication patterns and large-scale distributed infrastructure.
Develop and integrate scale-up and scale-out networking solutions for MAIA AI training and inference systems.
Translate AI/ML workload requirements into specific system-level networking requirements and evaluate architectural tradeoffs.
Drive the integration, bring-up, and qualification of switches, NICs, PHYs, SerDes, and optical components.
Create end-to-end validation strategies to characterize bandwidth, latency, congestion behavior, and communication efficiency.
Qualify next-generation electrical and optical technologies including PAM4 SerDes, copper interconnects, and silicon photonics.
Lead root-cause analysis for complex networking issues across hardware, firmware, and system software layers.
Develop and improve telemetry, diagnostics, and automated tools for network health monitoring.
What we're looking for
Master's degree in Engineering and 3+ years of experience, or Bachelor's degree and 5+ years of experience, or equivalent.
5+ years of experience developing or validating networking, compute, storage, or accelerator hardware systems.
5+ years of experience designing, integrating, validating, or troubleshooting Ethernet-based infrastructure including switches, NICs, optics, PHYs, or SerDes.
5+ years of experience supporting AI, HPC, cloud, or large-scale data center infrastructure deployments.
Ability to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check.
Experience with GPU, FPGA, TPU, or custom AI accelerator systems (preferred).
Experience with scale-up and scale-out AI networking and distributed AI infrastructure (preferred).
Expertise in electrical/optical networking technologies like SerDes, PAM4, OSFP/QSFP-DD, or silicon photonics (preferred).
Cisco
TCP/IP
BGP
Firewalls
Radius
LDAP
TACACS
Cisco ISE
TACLANE
Linux
Windows Server
VMware vSphere
Hyper-V
Splunk
Tenable Nessus
Microsoft Visio
NIST
STIGs
ACAS