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Principal Performance Architect

Microsoft Corporation

Mountain View, CAJob$188–304K/yrSeen 3w agoSeen in employer's feed today

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At a glance

Compensation
$188–304K/yr
Location
Mountain View, CA
Work Authorization
Not specified

Olive lists jobs from US employers, including remote roles you can work from the United States.

Requirements

Credentials this posting asks for.

Microsoft Cloud Background Check

Job overview

Microsoft’s Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering team develops infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft’s cloud services. The MAIA Architecture Team defines operational measures of success for hardware manufacturing and improves planning, quality, delivery, scale, and sustainability. The Principal Performance Architect will analyze SoC performance for AI workloads, develop and test models, and collaborate with architecture, design, and performance verification teams.

Skills & qualifications

RequiredNice to have

Skills

GPU ArchitectureWorkload AnalysisPythonCC++Performance ModelingPerformance Analysis

Qualifications

Doctorate+3, Master's+6, Bachelor's+8 or Equivalent ExperienceMicrosoft Cloud Background CheckMS or PhD in Relevant CS/EE/CE4+ Years Python, C, C++ Experience6+ Years Performance Modeling Experience

Full job description

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 a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for passionate engineers to help achieve that mission.

As Microsoft's cloud business continues to grow the ability to deploy new offerings and hardware infrastructure on time, in high volume with high quality and lowest cost is of paramount importance. To achieve this goal, the MAIA Architecture Team is instrumental in defining and delivering operational measures of success for hardware manufacturing, improving the planning process, quality, delivery, scale and sustainability related to Microsoft cloud hardware. We are looking for engineers with a dedicated passion for customer focused solutions, insight and industry knowledge to envision and implement future technical solutions that will manage and optimize the Cloud infrastructure.

We are looking for a Principal Performance Architect to join the team.

Responsibilities

  • Actively collaborate with architects, and provide critical feedback for future SoC

  • Use models to analyze performance bottlenecks in SoC for critical AI workloads

  • Opportunities for performance and power optimizations, and trade-offs on AI accelerators

  • Develop and test SoC and IP models, including model integration

  • Continuous collaboration with design and performance verification teams to close on SoC performance

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

  • Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ years technical engineering experience OR Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience OR equivalent experience.

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:

  • MS or PhD in relevant CS/EE/CE

  • Experience in architecture and workload analysis on GPUs

  • 4+ years of experience with Python, C, C++

  • 6+ years of experience with performance modeling at various levels of abstraction, and analysis

Silicon Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

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

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations. (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html)

How this job compares

Set against the 2,947 open Hardware Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted October 29, 2026.

Pay
  • This posting$188–304K/yr
  • California median$146–214K/yr906 salary ranges
  • US median$131–201K/yr2,158 salary ranges

This range's midpoint, $246K, is 39% above the California median midpoint ($178K) — in the top quarter of Hardware Engineer salary ranges in California.

Openings
Olive Jobs lists 1,197 open Hardware Engineer jobs in California and 2,947 across the US. 1% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
Hiring the most in California
Experience
This posting asks for at least 4 years of experience; Hardware Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for 5 years at the median (2,476 postings).
Education
1,840 of the 2,947 open Hardware Engineer jobs (62%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.

Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on October 29, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.

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