Director of SW and FW Engineering

Overview

On Team Xbox, we aspire to empower the world's 3 billion gamers to play the games they want, with the people they want, anywhere they want. Gaming, the largest and fastest growing category in media & entertainment, represents an important growth opportunity for Microsoft. We are leading with innovation, as highlighted by bringing the Game Pass subscription to PC, bringing Xbox to new devices with Cloud Gaming, and our recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard King creating exciting new possibilities for players.

The Director of SW and FW Engineering will lead firmware strategy, execution, and people leadership across the Xbox Devices portfolio. This role is responsible for driving high-quality firmware delivery from early design through manufacturing and productization, in close partnership with hardware, system software, silicon, and manufacturing teams. This leader will establish high quality engineering systems, develop top talent, and ensure firmware quality, reliability, and scalability for Xbox consoles, accessories, and future devices.

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

• Lead and grow a high-performing firmware engineering organization, delivering success through empowerment, accountability, coaching, and care.
• Own firmware delivery across the full product lifecycle, from architecture and design through manufacturing, validation, and sustained support.
• Define and drive firmware strategy for complex, low-level systems, including SoC firmware, boot flows, platform initialization, BSPs, and device drivers.
• Establish processes for firmware design, requirements, documentation, code review, integration, and release management in partnership with hardware and system software teams.
• Provide technical direction and leadership for complex firmware subsystems, including bootloaders, platform bring-up, peripheral enablement, memory management, interrupts, scheduling, and OS primitives.
• Lead cross-functional debugging and root-cause analysis across firmware, hardware, and silicon, ensuring issues are resolved at the source and do not recur.
• Set organizational direction for automation, validation enablement, tooling, and reuse to improve quality, velocity, and scalability.
• Partner closely with silicon vendors, platform teams, manufacturing, and external partners to ensure successful product launches and sustained device quality.
• Build an inclusive, collaborative culture that attracts top talent and invests deeply in individual growth and leadership development.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep experience in embedded firmware development and system-level debugging for complex consumer or computing devices
• Demonstrated experience with integrated development environments (such as Visual Studio or Keil) and debuggers, and working with off-the-shelf components (OS libraries, 3rd party libraries or drivers, command line tools, etc.)
• 10+ years of proven people-leadership experience, including setting clear objectives, delivering results through teams, and developing engineering leaders and 10+ years leading teams of size 10 or larger
• Track record of shipping products from design through manufacturing and productization
• Deep expertise in SoC bring-up, platform firmware architecture, boot flows, BSP enablement, and low-level driver development
• Experience scaling firmware organizations, driving reuse and automation, and improving quality and time-to-market across multiple products
• 10+ years of technical engineering experience, including significant leadership responsibility.
• 10+ years of experience leading large, end-to-end engineering programs.

Software Engineering M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
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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.