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, who 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.

Azure Research – Systems is a research group that brings forward-looking systems research directly into the core of Azure. The group originated from the Systems Research Group at Microsoft Research for a closer integration with Azure.

Our group’s research is focused on designing and building next-generation cloud systems, and to bring about non-linear improvements on the cost efficiency, reliability, and usability of Microsoft’s online services and datacenters. We work closely with the company’s product groups to (1) propose and lead joint projects that improve efficiency (broadly construed), and (2) do research on potential future efficiency improvements. Over the last several years, technology arising from our research has had a major impact in the operation of Azure and of our datacenters and has led to publications in top systems conferences such as ISCA, ASPLOS, OSDI, SOSP, Eurosys, SoCC, NSDI, MICRO, and USENIX ATC.

Current projects for which we are seeking PhD Research Interns include, but are not limited to, memory disaggregation and oversubscription, efficient graphics processing units (GPU)/large language model (LLM) deployments, power efficiency and sustainability from the node to the datacenter levels, artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) and serverless computing.

You will have access to real problems for which the solutions have significant impact; code, datasets and workloads from large deployments of real systems; and the possibility to prototype, evaluate and deploy solutions. Research Interns are expected to clearly document and communicate their ideas and given suitable results, contribute to research publications. Research Interns are also encouraged to show initiative throughout the internship and suggest further directions for 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 research internship program.