Industry Internship Opportunity

Microsoft Research - Azure for Operators

Location: Virtual Internship - Participation in the Research Internship Program requires that you are physically located in the United States or Canada for the duration of the internship.
Job number: 950339

Job Summary

Research Internships at Microsoft provide a dynamic environment for research careers with a network of world-class research labs led by globally-recognized scientists and engineers. Our researchers and engineers pursue innovation in a range of scientific and technical disciplines to help solve complex challenges in diverse fields, including computing, healthcare, economics, and the environment.

As former systems & networking researchers and engineers at Microsoft Research, we are now the Office of the CTO team in Azure for Operators (AFO OCTO). We are building research & technology in distributed systems, mobile systems, network verification, security, wide-area networking, and wireless networking to bring the power of the cloud to the 5G telecommunications industry.

Find out more about Azure for Operators at

AFO OCTO does research and development in multiple areas of networking, security, and systems. We build working systems, engage with academia, publish scientific papers, publish software for the research community, and deploy cutting-edge technologies to Azure and our customers. Individuals in our group have published in top academic conferences including ACM SIGCOMM, ACM MobiCom, ACM MobiSys, USENIX NSDI, IEEE S&P, and USENIX Security. We have had massive impact on the Azure Network by productizing research technologies including Software Defined Networking, Hardware-accelerated Datapath, and Network Verification. Find out more about our history at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/mobility-and-networking-research/ .

We strongly believe in building and fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment. We practice open communication and respectful dialogue. We support multiple social and career building opportunities in our internship program.

AFO OCTO is seeking R&D Intern candidates with stellar technical skills and backgrounds in distributed systems, mobile systems, network verification, security, wide-area networking, and wireless networking. The ideal candidates will have experience in large-scale systems and/or networks in addition to being fluent in the relevant state-of-the-art research. The ideal candidates should have strong ability to work with researchers and engineers at Microsoft to push forward state-of-the-art agendas, be a team player in a collaborative and supportive environment with outstanding programming skills. The work will require excelling in fast-paced execution and implementation on Azure platforms. Applicants should demonstrate depth of knowledge in systems and networking, and demonstrate experience in experimentation and implementation.

Responsibilities

Interns put inquiry and theory into practice. Alongside fellow doctoral candidates and some of the world’s best researchers, interns learn, collaborate, and network for life. Interns not only advance their own careers, but they also contribute to exciting research and development strides. During the 12-week internship, students are paired with mentors and expected to collaborate with other interns and researchers, present findings, and contribute to the vibrant life of the community. Research internships are available in all areas of research, and are offered year-round, though they typically begin in the summer.

Additional Responsibilities

  • Develop security, systems, and/or networking solutions that extend the state of the art in cloud-scale systems.
  • Implement and evaluate prototypes using simulations, small-scale testbeds and large-scale production environments.
  • Collaborate closely with team members on developing systems from prototyping to production level. Work closely with Azure engineering teams to drive scalable implementations.

Examples of more specific responsibilities include:

  • Design, implement and evaluate novel solutions for improving network protocols, traffic management and/or verification on wide-area networks.
  • Implement prototypes of centralized traffic managers that can scale to large cloud networks.
  • Design and implement security and trust features in an OS kernel or in a hypervisor
  • Extend a trusted execution environment (e.g., Intel SGX, AMD SEV) to a hardware accelerator, such as an FPGA or a GPU.
  • Optimize cellular RAN behavior using AI/ML techniques
  • Design and implement novel approaches to video-processing (e.g., ML, adaptive bitrate algorithms) for the 5G/edge.
  • Extend container-orchestration systems to adaptively schedule workloads across clouds and edges and support high-performance container networking.
  • Evaluate internship artifacts to support the publication of blog posts, white papers, and research papers.

Qualifications

  • In addition to the qualifications below, you’ll need to submit a minimum of two reference letters for this position. After you submit your application, a request for letters may be sent to your list of references on your behalf. Note that reference letters cannot be requested until after you have submitted your application, and furthermore, that they might not be automatically requested for all candidates. You may wish to alert your letter writers in advance, so they will be ready to submit your letter.
Required Qualifications
  • Must be currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Computer Science or related field. Exceptionally strong candidates enrolled in an M.S. or B.S. program will also be considered
  • Participation in the Research Internship Program requires that you are physically located in the United States or Canada for the duration of the internship
Preferred Qualifications
  • Must have experience building research or engineering systems in security, networking or distributed systems, as demonstrated through university projects and/or prior work experience.
  • Knowledge of and experience with cellular RAN, wireless signal processing, efficient distributed system & OS design, ML for system and network optimization, Kubernetes ecosystem will also be considered.

About MSR

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

HOW TO APPLY

Apply using the application link on the internship page at MSR.