Earlier today, yet another job post appeared on the Microsoft Career site stating that the next version of Windows would be faster,smaller and more responsive than Windows 8.
Here is what the job post read-
Principal Software Development Engineer in Test – Windows
Job Category: Software Engineering: Test
Location: United States, WA, Redmond
Job ID: 711553 11673
Product: Windows
Division: Windows DivisionAre you passionate about software performance? Are you excited by the potential to have a positive impact on hundreds of millions of users, by improving their Windows experience? The Windows Fundamentals Performance Test Team is look for a software design engineer who can help us do just that – make future releases of Windows faster, smaller, and more responsive than Windows 7. OS Fundamentals, and specifically performance were a major area of focus during Windows 7 and will be just as important if not more so, during the development of the next version(s).
We have built a mature performance testing infrastructure to analyze the behavior of the operating system under different tests and workloads, and detect performance bugs, and opportunities to improve performance. And now, we want to take that to the next level. Our role as a team is two-fold in that we are not only improving and enhancing our current infrastructure and test coverage, but we also provide technical leadership and guidance to partner teams to help them improve the performance testing and analysis of their own individual components. We are looking for an SDET that excel in both of those areas.
The candidate will exercise his/her strong technical knowledge of software performance and performance testing to help us define the right metrics for measuring and monitoring the performance of the integrated system, identify the components and scenarios that are critical to measuring and validating OS performance, identify & address any gaps in test coverage that prevent us from getting complete and accurate measurements, and to analyze performance logs and debug uncovered performance issues to find the root cause, potentially prototyping a fix, or working with the appropriate feature team to implement a fix. The candidate would also be key in improving and enhancing our existing infrastructure and tools to minimize noise in perf results and improve the analysis process to ensure that fewer and fewer performance bugs go undetected & unreported.
Strong technical leadership skills would be required to work with other feature teams that do not solely focus on performance, and engage them in a productive manner to help them understand what is required of their teams to ship high-quality, high-performance software. Similarly to identifying the key system-wide metrics that we monitor, you would help each individual team define the key metrics to monitor and analyze the performance of their components, help them design their component and build test plans with performance in mind, and help them implement high-quality tests, analyze the results, debug performance problems, and get them fixed.
The ideal candidate will have more than 10 years for strong technical testing experience – including performance testing expertise and exposure to or experience with common performance test tools, and at least 10 years of experience of product &/or development across several life cycles of a commercial software product; excellent technical, problem solving, analytical, design, and oral/written communication skills; strong leadership skills and the ability to articulate and collaborate on a clear vision with people in all engineering disciplines across multiple teams; self-motivated an ddriven to solve tough technical and business problems; BS or MS degree in computer science, computer engineering, or an equivalent degree.
