Hardware Manufacturing Engineer

Overview

Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) is the team behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” mission.

SCHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's over 200 online businesses including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Teams, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform globally with our server and data center infrastructure, security and compliance, operations, globalization, and manageability solutions.

Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering trusted experiences to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for engineers to help achieve that mission.

As Microsoft's cloud business continues to grow, deploying new hardware infrastructure on time, at high volume, with high quality and competitive cost is increasingly important. The Hardware, Infrastructure Management, and Fundamentals Engineering (HIFE) team defines and delivers operational measures of success for cloud hardware manufacturing, improving planning, quality, delivery, scale, and sustainability.

We are looking for engineers who combine strong hardware manufacturing fundamentals with disciplined execution, data-based decision making, and a customer-focused approach.

We are looking for a Hardware Manufacturing Engineer to join the team.

The Manufacturing Engineering Group collaborates with Microsoft's suppliers, engineering design teams, quality teams, business managers, and supply chain managers to ensure that new cloud hardware is available to customers on time and at high levels of quality. A critical part of this work is ensuring that Microsoft-designed hardware can be built at supplier factories safely, efficiently, repeatedly, and at scale.

In this role, you will independently drive assigned manufacturing workstreams for cloud hardware platforms, including GPU systems. You will coordinate NPI builds, assess supplier and production readiness, lead manufacturing issue triage, improve yield, and manage manufacturing risks from engineering validation through production ramp.

This opportunity will allow you to build deep expertise in custom silicon system manufacturing, develop cross-functional engineering partnerships, and contribute to one of Microsoft's most strategically important hardware programs.

#azurehwjobs #HIFE #SCHIE

Responsibilities

• Product Industrialization and Design for Manufacturing: Participate in DFM/DFA, testability, serviceability, packaging, automation, and sustainability reviews with design, NPI, quality, reliability, and supplier teams. Identify manufacturing constraints and drive actions to improve product and process readiness.
• NPI Build Execution and Capacity Readiness: Independently drive NPI build execution for assigned products or subsystems, coordinating engineering validation, design validation, production validation, and ramp builds across engineering teams and contract manufacturing sites. Assess equipment, tooling, fixtures, test coverage, staffing assumptions, material availability, and line capacity; escalate gaps and drive recovery actions before build start.
• Supplier Management and Production Risk Mitigation: Partner with suppliers, sourcing, quality, NPI, and engineering teams to assess manufacturing capability, qualification, compliance, capacity, and sub-tier risks. Track corrective actions, communicate constraints, and support supply continuity within assigned workstreams.
• Manufacturing Process and Supplier Readiness: Execute supplier process qualification and readiness assessments, including process audits, PPAP activities, fixture and tooling acceptance, incoming-quality criteria, and control-plan reviews. Improve manufacturing and repair processes to support repeatable production, yield improvement, and ramp readiness.
• Quality Systems and Process Control: Apply statistical process control, process capability analysis, control plans, inspection data, and yield analytics to reduce variation and detect defects early. Identify and implement practical automation, digital monitoring, vision-inspection, or analytics improvements that increase manufacturing visibility and issue-detection speed.
• Root Cause Analysis and Continuous Improvement: Lead L1/L2 triage for manufacturing-found issues and use structured problem-solving methods such as 8D, fishbone, 5-Why, and PFMEA to determine root cause, implement corrective actions, verify effectiveness, and prevent recurrence. Coordinate escalation to design, quality, supplier, and reliability teams when deeper technical ownership is required.
• Manufacturing Data and Operational Improvement: Analyze yield, defect, cycle-time, issue-aging, equipment, and process data to identify trends and improvement opportunities. Translate findings into clear recommendations and implement approved improvements within assigned products, processes, or supplier workstreams.
• Technical Validation and Risk Management: Maintain manufacturing risk registers and drive closure of PFMEA, NUDD, qualification, yield, tooling, material, schedule, and supplier-readiness risks. Support process qualifications, tolerance assessments, simulations, engineering changes, and failure-mode evaluations within assigned scope.
• Metrics, Communication, and Knowledge Transfer: Maintain dashboards for build readiness, yield, defects, risk closure, supplier performance, and corrective actions. Provide concise status, risks, and recommendations to program and manufacturing leadership, and document lessons learned for future builds and cross-program reuse.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications :

• Master's Degree in Manufacturing, Material, Mechanical, Electrical, Thermal, or Industrial Engineering, or related field AND 1+ year(s) experience in a manufacturing environment /repair OR Bachelor's Degree in Manufacturing, Material, Mechanical, Electrical, Thermal, or Industrial Engineering, or related field AND 2+ years experience in a manufacturing environment/repair OR equivalent experience.

Other

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements is required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to, the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Manufacturing, Material, Mechanical, Electrical, Thermal, or Industrial Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years experience in a hardware manufacturing or new product introduction environment OR Bachelor's Degree in a related engineering field AND 8+ years experience in a hardware manufacturing or new product introduction environment OR equivalent experience.
• Experience executing hardware NPI builds, manufacturing process readiness, production ramp, or supplier qualification activities.
• Experience using structured problem-solving methods and leading L1/L2 triage for hardware manufacturing issues.
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional engineering teams and external manufacturing partners to drive technical issues and production risks to closure.
• Ability to prioritize and execute work in a high-pressure environment and communicate build status, risks, and recommendations clearly to technical and program stakeholders.
• Experience in SoC system integration, or advanced ASIC-based hardware programs, including understanding how silicon-level decisions affect system manufacturing constraints.
• Experience with server compute, storage, GPU or AI accelerator, networking, power-delivery, or high-speed interconnect product development or manufacturing.
• Experience applying SPC, process capability analysis, control plans, yield analytics, or other statistical methods and translating the results into clear manufacturing recommendations.
• Experience with supplier qualification, PPAP, process audits, DFM/DFA, engineering-change impact