Hardware Analyst and Planner

Overview

Do you want to be at the forefront of innovating the latest hardware designs to propel Microsoft’s cloud growth? Are you seeking a unique career opportunity that combines both technical capabilities, cross team collaboration, with business insight and strategy?

Join our Strategic Planning and Architecture (SPARC) team within Microsoft’s Azure Hardware Systems & Infrastructure (AHSI) organization and be a part of the organization behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud mission.

Microsoft delivers more than 200 online services to more than one billion individuals worldwide and AHSI is the team behind our expanding cloud infrastructure.

We deliver the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's cloud businesses including Microsoft Azure, Bing, MSN, Office 365, OneDrive, Skype, Teams and Xbox Live.

Microsoft is looking for candidates to join the SPARC team, an influential group within the Azure Hardware Systems & Infrastructure organization responsible for driving end-to-end hardware strategy.

You will be responsible for cost and workload analysis in cloud and datacenter, to enable achieving the right hardware and product strategy for Microsoft Azure cloud business.

Our teams invent, design, and sustain the most scalable, secure, and efficient platforms and systems to power Azure now and into the future, building the best hardware systems that can power this platform a vertically integrated hardware and software stack from silicon to servers, racks and clusters, up through the datacenter infrastructure.

As a Hardware Analyst and Planner, you will own evaluation and communication of workload KPIs ensuring optimal understanding of their impact to performance and value across different product families and business segments.

You will partner with key suppliers, as well as engineering teams, finance, and execution teams on improving product performance understanding, reducing overall cost of goods, and optimizing working capital.

You will leverage your creativity to solve complex performance, power and cost optimization problems in a scalable way and drive continuous improvement of technology and hardware planning processes by benchmarking against best practices.

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.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

Bachelor’s Degree AND 5+ years experience in product / service / project / program management or software development

OR equivalent experience.

3+ years industry experience in hardware technology development (CPU, GPU, Storage, Memory) or cloud product development.

Experience in building complex analytical models in Microsoft Excel.

Other 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 or Master's in engineering, operations management, mathematics, physics, applied sciences or similar STEM field, OR corresponding technical experience.
• 5+ years’ experience in hardware technology development (CPU, GPU, Storage, Memory) or cloud product development.
• Knowledge of server hardware performance and TCO modeling and analysis, e.g. : CPU, Memory, and other components.
• Knowledge of cloud hardware and software ecosystem, including workloads and their affinity to different hardware architectures.
• Knowledge of supply chain with prior experience in product planning, performance analysis or manufacturing operations.
• In depth knowledge of Microsoft Office Applications, including advanced knowledge of Excel along with a solid analytical capabilities and experience with statistical tools (Regression analysis, advanced Excel / VBA, Power BI is a plus).
• Solid process / system background and proven ability to rapidly understand, use and drive improvements in new processes / systems and drive to a consensus for recommendation to leadership and executives.
• Good business judgment & communication / presentation skills.

Product Management IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $117,200 - $229,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $153,600 - $250,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here :

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until July 17, 2024.

Responsibilities

• Business Intelligence and Analytics : Perform analyses & build what-if’ scenario models to support decision making; work to improve data systems and develop new reporting tools to improve model visibility and accuracy.
• Workloads and Performance / Power Comparisons : Fundamental understanding of cloud and datacenter workloads.
• Ability to comprehend and utilize industry tools to project and model performance on variety of CPU and GPU architectures.
• Manage and monitor inventory key performance KPIs for general purpose compute, high performance compute, and internal Microsoft customers.
• Clear understanding of Spec CPU benchmarks and micro-benchmarks (SIR, SFR, Spec JBB, etc.), artificial intelligence and machine learning benchmarks for inference and training (BERT, BERT-3, GPT, Resnet, etc.)
• Identify problem areas and drive appropriate actions to achieve performance targets for the KPIs.
• Define process and predictive analytics to align consensus on server and datacenter workload and performance models.
• Cost plan management : Lead creation of new plans and scenarios for optimizing cost ensuring goals are achieved.
• Publish and build plan to engineering groups, planners, execution team and track cost indicators’ performance against plan, proactively managing all deviations and mitigating risks to meeting the commitment.
• Partner with supply chain, finance, business groups and engineering teams to determine and execute on an optimal cost plan.
• Embody our and

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

Industry leading healthcareEducational resourcesDiscounts on products and servicesSavings and investmentsMaternity and paternity leaveGenerous time awayGiving programsOpportunities to network and connect