Senior Software Engineer - Storage (C/C++)
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Key skills for this role
Key Skills for This Role
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Own end-to-end resolution of critical ICMs escalated from top enterprise customers — analyze memory dumps, ETW traces, Storage Spaces logs, and cluster event logs to root-cause failures in S2D, WSFC, CSV, NTFS, and ReFS that cannot be resolved by field support.
Investigate and fix security vulnerabilities in the Windows storage stack: privilege escalation through NTFS reparse points and junctions, information disclosure via uninitialized kernel pool in file system drivers, and denial-of-service through crafted on-disk structures in ReFS or NTFS.
Design and implement reliability and correctness fixes in kernel-mode storage miniport drivers (StorPort, NVMe, iSCSI, SMB Direct/RDMA) and file system filter drivers — owning the full fix lifecycle from root cause through regression test to servicing release.
Work directly with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D): diagnose and fix rebuild, rebalance, and fault-domain logic errors; investigate cache tier promotion/demotion bugs; resolve pool fragmentation and storage bus layer (SBL) issues in hyper-converged deployments.
Maintain and harden Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV): resolve quorum edge cases, CSV ownership transfer failures, cluster validation regressions, and inter-node storage arbitration deadlocks.
Contribute to the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and Windows Backup infrastructure: fix provider/requester interaction bugs, VSS writer timeouts in large-scale environments, and shadow copy metadata consistency failures.
Develop diagnostic tooling and automated regression suites for the storage stack — including kernel debugger extensions (!sdt, !storport analysis), ETW provider instrumentation, and Storage Spaces health model validation.
Collaborate with MSRC for coordinated disclosure and patch delivery on storage-related CVEs; participate in threat modeling and security design reviews for new file system and storage features.
Engage directly with enterprise customers and Partner Technical Advisors (PTAs) during active outages to provide expert-level guidance and expedite fix delivery through the servicing pipeline.
Mentor engineers; drive technical bar through code reviews, design reviews, and active participation in WSD hiring loops.
Working knowledge of NTFS on-disk structures: MFT record layout, attribute types, USN journal, and the NTFS log file for crash recovery.
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years of software engineering with deep expertise in C and C++ for Windows kernel-mode development.
Experience
debugging file system corruption scenarios: cross-linked clusters, orphaned MFT records, directory entry inconsistencies, and reparse point cycles.
Experience
with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D): storage pool creation, virtual disk provisioning, cache tier architecture (NVMe + SSD + HDD), fault domain awareness, and rebuild/rebalance behavior under node and drive failure.
Experience
reading and interpreting Storage Spaces diagnostic packages, cluster logs, and ETW traces (StorPort, ReFS, NTFS providers) to reconstruct failure timelines.
Experience
with Azure Stack HCI: S2D on validated hardware, stretched clustering across sites, Azure Arc integration, and software-defined storage policy management.
Knowledge of NVMe specification internals: submission/completion queue mechanics, NVMe error log page analysis, and namespace management — beyond just driver-level consumption.
Familiarity with SMB protocol internals (SMBv3): persistent handles, witness service (SWN), transparent failover, and scale-out file server (SOFS) architecture.
Experience
with deduplication and compression engines (Windows Data Deduplication): chunk store architecture, scrubbing, and garbage collection edge cases.
Knowledge of Windows BitLocker full-volume encryption integration with clustered storage and its interaction with CSV and S2D volumes.
Published CVE credits, conference presentations, or technical blog posts on file system or storage security topics.
MS/BS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related field.
About Microsoft
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