Principal Software Engineer

The Artificial Intelligence Performance team at Microsoft develops AI software that enables running AI models everywhere, from world’s fastest AI supercomputers, to servers, desktops, mobile phones, IoT devices and internet browsers. We collaborate with our hardware teams and partners, both internal and external, and operate at the intersection of AI algorithmic innovation, purpose-built AI hardware, systems, and software. We are a team of highly capable and motivated people that pride themselves on a collaborative and inclusive culture. We own inference performance of OpenAI and other state of the art LLM models and work directly with OpenAI on the models hosted on the Azure OpenAI service serving some of the largest workloads on the planet with trillions of inferences per day in major Microsoft products, including Office, Windows, Bing, SQL Server, and Dynamics.

As a Senior and/or Principal Software Engineer - Performance on the team, you will have the opportunity to work on multiple levels of the AI software stack, including the fundamental abstractions, programming models, compilers, runtimes, libraries and APIs to enable large scale training and inferencing of models. You will benchmark OpenAI and other LLM models for performance on GPUs and Microsoft HW, debug and optimize performance, monitor performance and enable these models to be deployed in the shortest amount of time and the least amount of HW possible helping achieve Microsoft Azure's capex goals.This is a hands-on technical role requiring software design and development skills. We’re looking for someone who has a demonstrated history of solving technical problems and is motivated to tackle the hardest problems in building a full end-to-end AI stack. An entrepreneurial approach and ability to take initiative and move fast are essential.

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

As an Engineer on the team the common tasks of the job would include, but not be limited to:

• Identify and drive improvements to end-to-end inference performance of OpenAI and other state-of-the-art LLMs
• Measure, benchmark performance on Nvidia/AMD GPUs and first party Microsoft silicon
• Optimize and monitor performance of LLMs and build SW tooling to enable insights into performance opportunities ranging from the model level to the systems and silicon level to improve customer experience and reduce the footprint of the computing fleet
• Enable fast time to market of LLMs/models and their deployments at scale by building SW tools that afford velocity in porting models on new Nvidia and AMD GPUs
• Design, implement, and test functions or components for our AI/DNN/LLM frameworks and tools
• Speeding up/reducing complexity of key components/pipelines to improve performance and/or efficiency of our systems
• Communicate and collaborate with our partners both internal and external
• Embody Microsoft's Culture and Valu

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python 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:

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Technical background and solid foundation in software engineering principles, computer architecture, GPU architecture, HW neural net acceleration
• Experience in end-to-end performance analysis and optimization of state of the art LLMs, including proficiency using GPU profiling tools
• Experience in DNN/LLM inference and experience in one or more DL frameworks such as PyTorch, Tensorflow, or ONNX Runtime and familiarity with CUDA, ROCm, Triton
• Cross-team collaboration skills and the desire to collaborate in a team of researchers and developers

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.