As the world’s leading Software Company, Microsoft has pioneered many of the technology innovations that paved the way for the digital information revolution. With products ranging from the Windows operating systems to the Office productivity suite, the Visual Studio suite of developers tools, and the Xbox 360 video game platform, and a broad range of new offerings in high-growth areas including Web-based services, unified communications, search, advertising and much more, Microsoft continues to be the worldwide leader in helping people and businesses realize their full potential.

Group: Global Foundation Services

Global Foundation Services is the engine that powers Hotmail, MSN, Windows Live and more than 200 other Microsoft services and web portals. As we build and manage the huge data centers and networks that support these services, we focus on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners around the world. Delivering world-class services involves way more than just wiring up vast arrays of servers. Making the "cloud" look simple takes a lot of innovation and dedication. Join our team and play a key role in Microsoft’s Software + Services strategy delivering cutting-edge services to hundreds of millions of people.

Job Description:
As part of the next generation server management team, this Developer/Leader works as part of team to help bring preproduction code to necessary quality, develop solutions for automating deployment and incident management for large scale deployments. You will play critical role in designing architecture and building software solutions for data center services, in a distributed, large scale environment. You have a unique opportunity to make huge impact to Microsoft’s "Software as a Service" strategy.

Key Responsibilities
1. Write functional specifications and design documents. Present conclusions and strategies to management and internal teams.
2. Develop large scale, distributed software in C++, C#, .NET, ASP, SQL etc
3. Debug, analyze, and automate several aspects of live-site operations in a very large infrastructure of Windows servers
4. Build automation and monitoring solutions and tools to optimize service management.
5. Develop statistical models to understand service behavior.

Critical Success factors
1. Strong analytical problem solving skills and ability to interpret data
2. Successful track record developing features through an entire product cycle
3. Excellent communication, leadership, customer focus, and cross-team organizational skills. Past management experience is a plus
4. Ability to write great specs and partner with test and internal partner teams/customers
5. Solid understanding of web or data center technologies, distributed service/fault tolerant/scalable system design and core IT products (for example Microsoft MOM, NT, IIS, Media, AD, SQL, networking, DNS, ACLs, VLANs, QoS etc)

Requirements
1. A minimum of five years of software development experience in Internet services/data center environments
2. Solid programming experience in C++, C#, .NET, SQL, etc
3. Strong SQL knowledge
4. Bachelor degree in Computer Science/Engineering or equivalent experience is required

At Microsoft, we believe that diversity enriches our performance and products, the communities where we live and work, and the lives of our employees. As our workforce evolves to reflect the growing diversity of our communities and the global marketplace, we continue to expand our efforts to understand, value, and incorporate differences as we help other realize their potential. Come explore diversity at Microsoft!

Please log onto www.microsoft.com/careers job code # 235468 to apply, or email a-jrsalm@microsoft.com with your resume and/or any questions.