Technical Staff, Microsoft Robotics

Job Description

Job Title: Member of Technical Staff, Microsoft Robotics. Location: Redmond, Washington, USA

Job Type: Full-Time (Hybrid, 4 days/week in-office)

Responsibilities:

• Define and own the long-term technical architecture for Microsoft's robotics platform, ensuring scalability across engineering teams, partners, and customers.
• Design the core architecture that integrates robotics software, AI models, cloud infrastructure, and edge computing systems.
• Architect systems that balance latency, throughput, compute efficiency, reliability, and cost across cloud and robotic edge environments.
• Lead evaluation and validation strategies for robotics platforms, establishing testing methodologies, quality standards, autonomy benchmarks, and human-in-the-loop safety mechanisms;
• Solve complex cross-stack engineering challenges involving AI models, robotics platforms, and production deployments through detailed system analysis and root-cause investigation.
• Integrate robotics engineering with modern AI technologies by collaborating with perception, manipulation, locomotion, simulation, and foundation model teams.
• Establish engineering standards, design principles, code quality expectations, and technical review processes across the organization.
• Influence technical strategy across Microsoft Discovery and Quantum, Microsoft Research, Azure, hardware partners, and enterprise customers.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to senior and principal engineers while strengthening the organization's engineering capabilities.
• Evaluate emerging technologies in embodied AI, robotics middleware, simulation, and robot learning, determining their adoption into the platform.
• Promote Microsoft's culture, values, and engineering excellence.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline, or equivalent experience.
• At least 8 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong programming experience in one or more of the following languages:
  • C
  • C++
  • C#
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Python
• Ability to satisfy Microsoft Cloud Background Check requirements and applicable security screenings.

Preferred:

• Master's degree with 12+ years of engineering experience, or Bachelor's degree with 15+ years of engineering experience, or equivalent experience.
• Experience owning the architecture and long-term evolution of large-scale production platforms or distributed systems.
• Experience with robot learning technologies, including vision-language-action models, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, foundation models, and embodied AI.
• Experience deploying and managing robotic fleets, including fleet orchestration, edge runtime environments, over-the-air updates, and observability systems.
• Deep understanding of robotics perception, planning, control, simulation, learning, and autonomous system integration;
• Experience leading multidisciplinary engineering teams across robotics hardware, AI, simulation, infrastructure, and machine learning.
• Proven ability to mentor senior engineers and establish engineering best practices.
• Experience building large-scale machine learning infrastructure, model serving, inference optimization, and deployment workflows.
• Experience with robotics middleware such as ROS, ROS2, Nav2, MoveIt, RViz, or Foxglove;
• Experience using simulation platforms such as Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, Drake, Gazebo, or similar environments.
• Experience designing cloud-native robotics systems using Microsoft Azure or comparable cloud platforms.
• Experience with safety-critical autonomous systems and human-in-the-loop robotics.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and Python for production robotics software.
• Publications, patents, open-source leadership, or standards contributions in robotics, AI, autonomous systems, or machine learning are considered an advantage.

Benefits and Compensation:

• Base salary range across most U.S. locations: $165,600 to $296,400 per year.
• Base salary range for the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City metropolitan area: $220,800 to $331,200 per year.
• Eligible employees may receive additional compensation and Microsoft employee benefits based on company policies;
• Opportunity to work on cutting-edge robotics, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and physical AI technologies.
• Collaborate with world-class researchers, engineers, and industry partners on next-generation robotics platforms.

Other Information:

• Work arrangement: Hybrid, with four days per week in the office.
• Travel requirement: Less than 25%.
• Position Level: Individual Contributor (IC6).
• Business Division: Microsoft Discovery and Quantum (MDQ).
• Employment Type: Full-Time;
• Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled, with the posting remaining open for a minimum of five days.
• Candidates must successfully complete Microsoft's required background and security screening process.
• Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer and provides equal employment opportunities regardless of protected characteristics under applicable laws.