Senior Hardware Manufacturing Engineer

Role Overview

The Senior Hardware Manufacturing Engineer is responsible for ensuring Microsoft's cloud hardware is manufactured efficiently, at high quality, and at scale. Working within the Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) organization, the role partners with suppliers, design teams, and manufacturing partners to support new hardware products from development through mass production.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop factory layouts, production lines, staffing plans, and manufacturing capacity models.

• Collaborate with suppliers and engineering teams to assess manufacturing readiness, quality, compliance, and production risks.

• Design, standardize, and optimize manufacturing and repair processes across global supplier sites.

• Improve manufacturing quality using:

• Statistical Process Control (SPC)

• AI-driven analytics

• Vision systems

• Automation and digital monitoring

• Lead root cause analysis using methodologies such as:

• 8D

• Fishbone Analysis

• PFMEA

• DFMEA

• Six Sigma

• Drive AI, IoT, automation, and predictive maintenance initiatives to improve factory efficiency.

• Work with product design teams to improve manufacturability, automation, reliability, serviceability, and sustainability.

• Lead product qualification, engineering validation, risk assessments, simulations, and failure analysis.

• Support new product introductions (NPI) and influence suppliers on long-term technology investments.

• Build dashboards and executive reports to monitor supplier performance, manufacturing quality, compliance, and operational metrics.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Manufacturing, Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial, Materials, Thermal Engineering, or a related field plus 5+ years of manufacturing/repair experience, or
• Master's degree plus 4+ years of relevant experience.
• Ability to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check and required security screenings.

Preferred Qualifications

• 10–12+ years of manufacturing engineering experience.

• Experience with:

• Server hardware

• Compute and storage systems

• GPUs

• Networking hardware

• Knowledge of:

• Valor

• Creo

• Cadence Allegro

• Strong statistical analysis and data interpretation skills.

• Experience with:

• Power BI

• Microsoft Project

• Excel

• PowerPoint

• Proven leadership, supplier management, and problem-solving abilities.

• Experience driving manufacturing improvements in complex, high-volume production environments.

• Patent(s) or demonstrated engineering innovation is considered a plus.

Work Environment

• Fully on-site
• Less than 25% travel
• Full-time Individual Contributor (IC4) role.

Compensation

• U.S. base salary: $119,800–$234,700 annually.
• San Francisco Bay Area & New York City: $160,200–$261,000 annually.
• Eligible employees may also receive bonuses, stock awards, and Microsoft benefits depending on location and role.

About the Team

The role sits within Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE), the organization responsible for designing and manufacturing the hardware infrastructure that powers services including:

• Azure
• Microsoft 365
• Teams
• OneDrive
• Xbox Live
• Bing
• MSN

The team focuses on delivering scalable, reliable, and sustainable cloud hardware for Microsoft's global data centers.

Overall

This position is ideal for an experienced manufacturing engineer with expertise in hardware production, supplier quality, factory operations, AI-driven manufacturing, process optimization, and new product introduction (NPI). The role combines manufacturing engineering, supplier management, data analytics, automation, and continuous improvement to ensure Microsoft's cloud hardware is produced efficiently, reliably, and at global scale.