Updated Jan 20, 2026 using last 90 days postings.

Microsoft Hiring Trends – January 2026

Microsoft is heavily scaling its software engineering teams, particularly in Washington state and India, focusing on building secure, distributed, cloud-native solutions with strong emphasis on identity lifecycle management, cybersecurity, and developer productivity around Azure services. The company is investing in advanced security operations, identity governance, and hybrid identity transformations, while also expanding leadership roles to manage cross-functional teams delivering secure software and operational excellence. Additionally, they are growing technical support and strategic account management functions to enhance customer engagement and digital transformation efforts globally.

Note: These dashboards are not the source of truth. Job posting data can include duplicates and may double count roles. Treat the results as a sample that helps explain what the postings suggest about hiring focus. Summaries are generated with an LLM and may contain errors or omissions. For the most accurate and complete information, research the company directly.

Tracked openings

3,246

Remote share

Top location

WA, US

Top category

Software Engineering

Inside The Product

Summary

Microsoft builds cloud platforms, developer tooling, enterprise security/identity solutions, and mission-critical infrastructure while also delivering consulting and account-level digital transformations. Job postings emphasize shipping reliable distributed systems, securing identity and access, and operating global services at scale.

What They Build

Cloud platform services and SDKs (Azure resources, .NET/C SDKs) focused on developer productivity and distributed systems
Security and identity: Entra ID, hybrid Active Directory, identity governance, tenant and endpoint hardening
Reliability & operations: SRE/DRI practices, on-call rotations, monitoring, incident response, postmortems
Mission-critical infrastructure: data center electrical design, power distribution and backup systems
Customer-facing support and transformation services: technical support management, strategic account technologists and consulting for digital transformation

Customers & Users

Enterprise IT organizations (hybrid Active Directory, Entra, virtualization, mission-critical facilities)
Software developers and SDK consumers building on Azure and distributed platforms
Internal and external operators relying on high-availability services (SRE/DRI audiences)
Strategic/enterprise accounts and CXO-level stakeholders receiving digital transformation guidance
Support customers requiring technical escalation and lifecycle management

Workflows & Systems

DRI/on-call rotations to monitor services, respond to incidents, and author postmortems
Architecture and design docs used to validate hypotheses and drive cross-team solutions
Automation-first CI/CD pipelines with unit/integration/contract tests and test strategy ownership
Cross-functional planning for multi-quarter delivery, resourcing, and dependency management
Use of AI to automate operational processes and enable predictive insights for service improvement
Vendor/consultant coordination for data center design and construction
Account planning and orchestration of internal teams and partner ecosystems for customer outcomes

Role Insights

Software Engineering (Backend/Cloud SDKs)

Teams build and maintain Azure SDKs and distributed services, hiring engineers who write design docs, own CI/CD and test automation, serve as DRI on-call, and work in C#/C/C++/Java/Python to ship reliable cloud APIs.

Software Engineering Leadership

Leadership hires focus on planning and execution across quarters, mentoring teams, driving architecture/design decisions, and ensuring security, reliability, and operational excellence in cross-team deliveries.

Cybersecurity & Identity Engineering

Security teams solve identity, access, and tenant hardening (Entra/AD/AVD), recruiting candidates with Tier 2/3 incident resolution, identity lifecycle governance experience, and ability to lead escalations and on-call support.

Site Reliability / Operations / Data Engineering & Infrastructure

Hiring signals emphasize SRE practices—monitoring, observability, reducing incident volume, DRI responsibilities, and expertise in cloud platforms, CI/CD, and operational runbooks.

Machine Learning & AI Engineering

Roles call for applying AI to automate operational processes and deliver predictive insights—candidates with experience integrating AI into identity or service automation are sought.

Technical Support & Customer Success

Support and management roles focus on customer escalation handling, case triage, readiness training, and closing the feedback loop into product teams to improve customer experience.

Data Center / Electrical Engineering

Infrastructure teams design mission-critical data center electrical systems (UPS, generators, MV/LV switchboards) and hire engineers experienced in BOD-to-IFC delivery and consultant/vendor coordination.

Enterprise Sales & Consulting

Account technologists and consulting leads drive digital transformation for assigned accounts, combining industry insights, account planning, and orchestration of technical resources to influence CXO-level decisions.

Team Focus

Software Engineering: 431 roles (13.3%)
Software Engineering Leadership: 383 roles (11.8%)
Machine Learning And Ai Engineering: 222 roles (6.8%)
Data Engineering And Infrastructure: 174 roles (5.4%)
Backend Engineer: 141 roles (4.3%)
Cybersecurity Engineering: 138 roles (4.3%)
Product Management: 101 roles (3.1%)
Engineering Management: 100 roles (3.1%)

Skill Stack

Software Engineering

C# C++ Java Python Distributed Systems Cloud Native Architecture Infrastructure as Code Telemetry and Monitoring CI/CD Pipelines Microservices

Software Engineering Leadership

Technical Leadership Distributed Systems Cloud Technologies Agile Methodologies Design Documentation On-call Incident Management Cross-team Collaboration Mentorship

Machine Learning And Ai Engineering

Python Deep Learning Frameworks PyTorch TensorFlow Natural Language Processing Model Training and Optimization Generative AI Reinforcement Learning Experimentation and Evaluation

Data Engineering And Infrastructure

Python Java C# Data Pipelines Cloud Platforms LLM Frameworks Prompt Engineering Data Modeling Performance Monitoring AI/ML Systems

Backend Engineer

C# C++ Java Python Distributed Systems Microservices Cloud Services API Development Object-Oriented Design CI/CD

Cybersecurity Engineering

Identity and Access Management Active Directory PowerShell Security Incident Response Threat Hunting Machine Learning for Security Cloud Security Security Automation Security Certifications

Location Footprint

WA, US: 928 roles (28.6%)
India: 510 roles (15.7%)
Remote, US: 301 roles (9.3%)
CA, US: 185 roles (5.7%)
Australia: 109 roles (3.4%)
Canada: 98 roles (3.0%)
United Kingdom: 93 roles (2.9%)
China: 81 roles (2.5%)