Software Engineer II

** Overview*
* Interested in a fast-paced, innovative environment that offers tremendous learning and growth opportunities? The Azure Specialized (AzS) team is one of the fastest-growing organizations in Azure, focused on extending the capabilities of the Azure cloud through mission-critical enterprise and specialized workload platforms. We work on technologies that power some of Azure's most demanding workloads, including AI infrastructure, high-performance computing, VMware, Nutanix, Net App, SAP, Oracle, and other specialized solutions.

Azure Specialized designs and develops services that help customers run their most critical applications at cloud scale.

We are a diverse and collaborative team that values curiosity, innovation, mentorship, and continuous learning. We partner closely across Azure Compute, Azure Storage, Azure Networking, Azure Key Vault, and AI infrastructure teams, as well as with strategic industry partners, to deliver differentiated cloud experiences for our customers. If you're passionate about distributed systems, networking, cloud platforms, and solving complex technical challenges, we'd love to hear from you.

We are looking for a Software Engineer II to help build and operate platforms that integrate specialized partner technologies and services with Azure. In this role, you will work closely with engineers, product managers, and partner teams to understand customer requirements, design and implement features, and deliver reliable, scalable cloud services. You will leverage modern engineering practices and AI-assisted development tools throughout the software development lifecycle to improve productivity, quality, and operational excellence.

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.

** Responsibilities*
* + Uses appropriate artificial intelligence (AI) tools and practices across the software development lifecycle (SDLC) in a disciplined manner. Takes responsibility for the content of their AI-generated changes to artifacts, reviewing all changes and applying appropriate tooling and processes with minimal guidance.

+ Creates and implements code for a product, service, or feature, reusing code as applicable with minimal supervision. Writes and learns to create code that is extensible and maintainable. Considers diagnosability, reliability, and maintainability with few defects, and understands when the code is ready to be shared and delivered. Applies coding patterns and best practices to write code (e.g., leveraging state-of-the-art generative artificial intelligence [GenAI], approaches to source code organization, naming conventions).

Escalates identified blockers or unknowns during the development process, communicates how they will impact timelines, and contributes to identifying strategies and/or opportunities to address them with minimal supervision.

+ Understands and provides feedback for proposals for architecture, with technical leadership from others. With minimal supervision, tests and explores various design options for a product/solution feature, outlining strengths and weaknesses of each option. Collaborates with architects with minimal supervision to build and modify a product/solution feature, providing feedback as needed. Begins to own or collaborate with other engineers on the architecture of solutions, following technical leadership as applicable.

Contributes to the development of design documents that support user stories and other product requirements with oversight. Develops an awareness of the current technology landscape.

+ Escalates and shares findings from investigations with the team and owns some design decisions. Helps to ensure system architecture and individual designs meet performance, scalability, resiliency, cost of goods sold (COGS), and other requirements and expectations. Upholds Microsoft standards of…