Are you passionate about cloud computing, obsessed with customer experience, and skilled at translating complex technical issues into clear, transparent communication? Do you thrive in high-stakes, fast-paced environments and want to play a pivotal role in how Microsoft shows up for customers during moments that matter most? If so, the Azure Customer Experience (CXP) team has the opportunity for you. Microsoft Azure is one of the most exciting and strategic products at Microsoft—powering mission-critical workloads for enterprises, governments, and startups around the world. Azure delivers on-demand, hyper-scale infrastructure and platforms via Microsoft's global data centers, enabling customers to build, host, and scale their applications with confidence. The Customer Reliability Engineering (CRE) team within Azure CXP is a top-level pillar of Azure Engineering responsible for world-class live-site management, customer reliability engagements, and modern customer-first experiences at scale. Our “no dead-ends” philosophy ensures that every customer, regardless of size or scale, can realize their full potential through the Microsoft Cloud. We are seeking a decisive, detail-oriented Service Engineer who will serve as the customer’s voice and advocate during high-severity incidents across Microsoft Azure. You will work closely with incident managers, engineering responders, and field stakeholders to shape and deliver clear, timely, and action-oriented communications during outages, security events, service retirements, and other high-impact scenarios. This is a critical, customer-facing role requiring exceptional writing skills, calm leadership during ambiguity, and a passion for building customer trust through transparency and clarity. You’ll work at the intersection of customer support, technical operations, and communications—and you’ll help shape how Microsoft communicates during crises, preemptively and retrospectively. **Responsibilities** + To be successful in this role, you must bring customer empathy, crisp communication instincts, and the ability to lead with clarity under pressure. You will: + Serve as the primary author and approver of customer-facing communications during service incidents (SEV0/SEV1/SEV2), coordinating across Engineering, Support, PM, and Field. + Ensure every message to customers reflects transparency, empathy, and actionability, even in high-pressure and fast-moving environments. + Actively partner with Incident Commanders to stay synchronized on technical developments and customer impact during live-site events. + Review telemetry, support signals, and field input to guide communication strategy and tailor messaging to affected audiences. + Participate in the on-call rotation as a Customer Communications Lead, contributing to a 24/7 response model. + Contribute to Post-Incident Reviews (PIRs) by documenting impact, customer experience themes, and communication effectiveness. + Work with tooling and platform teams to enhance the automation and targeting of service notifications, especially in Azure Service Health. + Champion communication best practices, including ETA consistency, mitigation clarity, and consistent updates throughout the incident lifecycle. + Help build communication playbooks and scalable frameworks for maintenance and retirement events. + Partner with product, support, and engineering teams to identify improvements in customer readiness and self-serve guidance. **Qualifications** **Required Qualifications** + Bachelor's Degree or Trade Certification in Computer Science, Information Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Data Science, Cybersecurity, or related field. + OR equivalent experience. + Experience in cloud operations and incident response across platforms like Azure, AWS, or GCP, within a 24×7×365 enterprise environment, ensuring high availability and rapid issue resolution under pressure. + Exceptional written communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to translate complex technical issues into clear, concise, and customer-appropriate messaging—especially during high-impact incidents and ambiguous situations. + Cross-functional collaboration and strategic thinking skills, aligning Engineering, Support, Field, and Communications teams to drive consensus, prioritize customer needs, and advocate for platform transparency and experience improvements using frameworks like ITIL. **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** + Bachelor's Degree in Communications, History, English, Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent experience. + OR equivalent experience. + Familiarity with service health platforms and tooling for communicating incident status at scale (e.g., Azure Service Health, SHP, ICET, Status Page). + Experience managing or leading customer communications for high-severity incidents or outages. + Prior experience as an Incident Commander, Crisis Comms Manager, or Live Site Engineering lead. + Familiarity with cloud resiliency patterns, failover models, and recovery scenarios. + Experience with AI/ML-based tooling for incident detection, log correlation, or predictive alerting is a plus. + Certifications in cloud technologies (Azure, AWS, GCP), ITIL, or SRE frameworks are desirable. Service Engineering IC2 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $84,200 - $165,200 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 $109,000 - $180,400 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay Microsoft will accept applications for the role until September 1, 2025. Every day, our customers stake their business and reputation on our cloud. You can help #AzCXP provide the clarity and confidence they need during moments of uncertainty. Join us in shaping the voice of Microsoft Azure in the eyes of the world. \#azcre #cxpcomms #azreliability Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .