While Microsoft has hired consultants with government clearances for many years, it’s now dedicated to raising awareness of the opportunities that exist for engineers who might not have thought of Microsoft as a place to utilize their technical skills and their government clearances to drive mission-based work.
President Brad Smith shares more on Microsoft’s work in this space, “First, we believe in the strong defense of the United States and we want the people who defend it to have access to the nation’s best technology, including from Microsoft.”
Whitney, a Software Engineer with Azure agrees. “Microsoft has the unique opportunity to positively impact our country by partnering with the government.”
Microsoft Isn’t Looking for Your Average Engineer
Microsoft is looking for innovative and collaborative software and site reliability engineers with Top Secret clearances to join their dynamic teams in Reston, VA and Redmond, WA. “These opportunities are at the ground level of creating a better cloud for the government,” says Talent Soucer Madelyn Machado. “Every engineer we are hiring in this space is helping Microsoft shape the way the cloud is built.”
“Specifically,” she continues, “we are looking for engineers with experience ranging from software development, systems engineering, networking engineering, scalable system design, automation and scripting. These roles are responsible for building, monitoring, deploying and maintaining both the infrastructure and the software for Azure and Office365 in the government space.”
Not All Microsoft Employees Have a “Traditional Microsoft Background”
These teams within Microsoft are incredibly interesting because they are a mixture of people with traditional engineering backgrounds and military backgrounds, but many of these teams are quite small, especially considering the impactful and global work they execute on.
“It’s a common misconception,” says Jason, Senior Site Reliability Engineer, “that Microsoft is a giant machine and people get lost in the churn. Every group I work with here is very dedicated to the mission and easy to chat about their technologies with.”
Another misconception may be that everyone has a traditional Microsoft background, but actually, these teams aren’t all made up of programmers. “The groups I support,” says Machado, “have prepared to train and develop our engineers from various backgrounds. We have created robust training and development programs, and we’ve made it a priority to put new engineers on teams that can provide the mentorship and assistance to prepare them for success.”
However, amongst the diverse individuals that make up these engineering teams, there are some commonalities that continue to surface among Microsoft employees. They are collaborative, innovative, and mission oriented – a reflection of the company itself.
“A key factor in my work health is simply knowing that my work is impactful, as I am sure is the case for all professionals,” muses Services Engineer Adam. “In such regards, Microsoft has never let me down. It is a unique company with a big heart that wants to advance technology and mankind simultaneously.”
Interested in learning how your Top Secret clearances and technical skills could land you a career at Microsoft? Visit our company profile page.
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