Principal Manufacturing Engineer
Microsoft Corp · Boise, ID
- Level
- Senior
- Team
- Manufacturing
- Base pay
- $143k–$275k
- Degree
- Required (or equivalent experience)
- Experience asked
- 7+ years
- Industry
- Industrial
- Posted
- Recently
The role in 30 seconds
A senior manufacturing role at Microsoft Corp (industrial) in Boise, ID. Factory Operations & Capacity Planning: Develop production line capability, factory layouts, staffing plans, and capacity models to support product ramps, high-volume manufacturing, and repair operations.
- They ask for
- 7+ years · degree required (or equivalent experience)
- Tools it names
- Six Sigma, Root cause, SPC, FMEA, Validation (IQ/OQ/PQ), Automation
- Base pay
- $143k–$275k
Read from the posting. The full description is below.
From the plant jobs report · week of October 19, 2026
Manufacturing Engineer roles in Idaho: typical posted base $143k–$215k. This one lists $143k–$275k.
Median of the low and high ends of 4 live postings that list pay, out of 8 manufacturing engineer openings in Idaho, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.
Idaho plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →
How this role compares
Against 7 other live manufacturing postings in Idaho.
Skills these teams ask for most
- ✓ Tooling 75%
- Team leadership 63%
- Lean 38%
- ✓ Root cause 25%
- Welding 25%
- ✓ Six Sigma 25%
✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.
At a glance
Pulled from the posting text. If it's not listed here, the posting didn't say.
How to get in at this plant
Five moves over a week or two. The first one takes ten minutes.
- 1
Pick 2–3 people on the Manufacturing team at Microsoft Corp
Engineers who joined in the last year or two reply the most. Use the team search on this page to find them.
- 2
Send a short, curious note
One real question about their work. No favors yet. Each person gets a different note, written for this role.
- 3
Turn a reply into a short call
Questions worth asking about this team:
- What does a normal week look like on your team?
- Is the work mostly new product launches or sustaining existing lines?
- How much time do you spend on the floor versus at a desk?
- How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
- 4
Apply with someone vouching for you
If the call went well, ask whether they’d pass your résumé to the hiring manager. Send your résumé link, apply that day, and let them know.
- 5
Bring proof to the interview
One page of before-and-after numbers from projects you led: scrap, OEE, cycle time, cost. Plant managers hire on results.
Full description from Microsoft CorpAs posted on their careers site.ShowHide
Responsibilities
- ◆Factory Operations & Capacity Planning: Develop production line capability, factory layouts, staffing plans, and capacity models to support product ramps, high-volume manufacturing, and repair operations.
- ◆Supplier Management & Production Risk Mitigation: Partner with suppliers, sourcing, NPI, and engineering teams to assess manufacturing capability, qualification, compliance, capacity, and sub-tier risks while driving corrective actions and supply continuity.
- ◆Manufacturing Process & Supplier Readiness: Develop, standardize, and optimize manufacturing and repair processes across global supplier sites, ensuring scalable production, yield improvement, capacity readiness, and continuous operational excellence.
- ◆Quality Systems & Process Control: Implement SPC, automation, AI-driven analytics, vision systems, and digital monitoring solutions to improve quality, reduce variability, detect defects early, and enable predictive quality management.
- ◆Root Cause Analysis & Continuous Improvement: Lead structured problem-solving efforts (8D, Fishbone, PFMEA, DFMEA, Six Sigma) to identify, resolve, and prevent recurring manufacturing, design, and repair issues.
- ◆AI, Automation & Predictive Maintenance: Drive adoption of AI/ML, IoT, remote monitoring, and predictive maintenance technologies to improve equipment reliability, operational efficiency, and factory visibility.
- ◆Product Industrialization & Design for Manufacturing: Collaborate with design, NPI, quality, and supplier teams to ensure products, packaging, and processes meet manufacturability, automation, reliability, serviceability, and sustainability requirements.
- ◆Technical Validation & Risk Management: Lead qualification strategies, NUDD assessments, engineering changes, simulations, tolerance analysis, and failure-mode evaluations to proactively identify and mitigate technical, schedule, tooling, and capacity risks.
- ◆Program Execution & Technology Roadmaps: Influence suppliers to invest in new technologies, align with long-term product strategies, support new product introductions, and drive successful project execution from development through mass production.
- ◆Metrics, Governance & Business Reviews: Establish dashboards and reporting mechanisms to monitor supplier performance, quality, compliance, operational efficiency, and provide manufacturing insights for executive reviews and QBRs.
Qualifications
Masters Degree in Manufacturing, Material, Mechanical, Electrical, Thermal, or Industrial Engineering, or related field AND 7+ years experience in a manufacturing environment/repair OR Bachelors Degree in Manufacturing, Material, Mechanical, Electrical, Thermal, or Industrial Engineering, or related field AND 8+ years experience in a manufacturing environment /repair OR equivalent experience.
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
- ✓Doctorate in Manufacturing, Material, Mechanical, Electrical, Thermal, Industrial Engineering, or related field AND 5+ years experience in manufacturing environment/repair OR Master
Show full description ↓Show less ↑
Overview
Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) is the team behind Microsoft's expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud" mission. SCHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsofts over 200 online businesses including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Teams, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform globally with our server and data center infrastructure, security and compliance, operations, globalization, and manageability solutions. Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering trusted experiences to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for passionate, high-energy engineers to help achieve that mission.
As Microsofts cloud business continues to grow, the ability to deploy new offerings and hardware infrastructure on time, in high volume with high quality and lowest cost is of paramount importance. To achieve this goal, the Hardware, Infrastructure Management, and Fundamentals Engineering (HIFE) team is instrumental in defining and delivering operational measures of success for hardware manufacturing, improving the planning process, quality, delivery, scale and sustainability related to Microsoft cloud hardware. We are looking for engineers with a dedicated passion for customer focused solutions, insight and industry knowledge to envision and implement future technical solutions that will manage and optimize the Cloud infrastructure.
We are looking for a Principal Hardware Manufacturing Engineer to join the team.
The Hardware Manufacturing Engineering Group is a team that collaborates with Microsoft's suppliers, engineering design teams, business managers, and supply chain managers to ensure that the newest hardware that powers Microsoft's cloud services are available to our customers on time and at the highest levels of quality. A critical function in this work ensures the newest hardware developed by Microsoft is built at our supplier's factories with efficiency, safety, and at the highest levels of quality.
We are seeking individuals who are passionate, curious, agile and creative to work through the challenges of new product introduction as we deliver new platforms and solutions at scale. If you have experiences implementing designs through manufacturing which cover Compute and Storage workloads, join us and take part in our vision to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more with Microsoft's technology.
#azurehwjobs #HIFE #SCHIE
Other
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening