With another month gone (boy that one flew by), it's time to take a look at what Microsoft Careers, a great source for scraps on future Microsoft products, had to say about Windows 8 over the last 30 days or so. This month we saw seven job postings regarding the successor to both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, each one offering a small glimpse into what Microsoft is thinking about. Before we go through them in chronological order, we should note that some of them have already been removed and others have been slightly reworded, so what you see below is the original unedited versions Microsoft first posted and which we saved until now.
The first job posting is from November 3, 2009 and is looking for someone to fill the Software Engineering: Test job category by working on critical updates that will be delivered through Windows Update for Windows 8:
The WinSE UX Test team is one of the most fun teams in Windows Sustaining Engineering to work with! We release hot-fixes, security patches and Service packs for all Windows platforms on a regular basis. We help keep our customer install base humming through a significant portion of the lifecycle of the product. If the experience of shipping deliverables to millions of people on a regular basis energizes you, if you enjoy working on issues that impact those millions of our customers all the time, if you enjoy being in the limelight, and if you enjoy the thrill of solving critical problems, you have come to the right place!!!
The WinSE UX test team needs an strong SDET to develop new test automation, write robust test plans, designing test cases, debug reported issues across Windows Shell and related UX, help establish sound test engineering processes, and influence and contribute to the serviceability of Win8. As an SDET on this team, you'll design, implement, and execute various types of test automation, including functional, integration and release tests. You will also have several opportunities to write test tools, and work on security bugs, and will be interacting with PM and Dev counterparts in a dev/test/pm trio, and various partner teams. In this team, you will have an opportunity to ship important updates for Windows to solve critical reliability, performance and security issues via the Windows Update mechanism. This position requires strong communication and collaboration skills, and a drive for results. Overall, this position is best suited for a strong SDET looking for an opportunity to showcase your skills and innovate.
The second job posting arrived soon after, on November 4, 2009, asking for another Software Engineering: Test employee who will be doing various forms of testing internationally:
The Windows International Test OOB (Out of Band) team is handling a variety of International test projects including Windows Small Business Server (SBS), Home Server, stand-alone out of band releases for Windows 7/Windows 8, and down-level support packages requested by different business divisions by utilizing a state-of-the art vendor outsourcing model.
As a team member in this position, you will write test plans for World-Readiness- (Globalization & Localizability) as well as Localization Testing, and develop and manage test tools and guidelines. You will also perform globalization code reviews as part of the OOB process using tools and globalization guidelines. In addition, you will have to engage with Program Managers, Developers, International Project Managers and partner SDETs to collaborate on specification reviews, scheduling as well as budgeting and planning. Test execution will be done by vendor test resources in Beijing, China, so management of remote vendor resource will also be required.
The third job posting arrived a week later on November 11, 2009, looking for a Software Engineering: Development employee who would help the Windows Update team prepare for Windows 8. It has since been removed, but we've saved the text:
This is a great time to join us. Our team owns the Windows Update Client and our code delivers software and updates to over 600 million computers. We just finished up work on Windows 7, and are pushing forth on Windows 8 planning and preparation. There are opportunities to work on a number of hard problems, including third-party application updating, updating virtual machines while they're turned off (turns out this is pretty hard!), and delivering full applications, among others. To help us charge full steam on these fronts, we are looking for skilled and passionate software engineers.
As part of this team, you will help shape Windows 8. Components of our code include a core agent that runs as an NT service, an API layer and a UI application. We talk to the update servers using web services and we have special protocols in place to deal with the massive scale of the system.
The fourth job posting made its appearance on November 17, 2009 asking for someone for the Software Engineering: Development job category. It specifically talked about Windows 8 Server and a new UX framework before being significantly reworded:
Windows Server is the top-selling server operating system and is growing share in a growing market. Central to the success of Windows Server is the experience of IT Professionals managing Windows Server. For our next release, we are taking that experience to the next level by helping to make IT Professionals more effective and more productive by shipping a product they will love to use.
We work closely with UX and a passionate PM & Test team to deliver world-beating user experiences for managing Windows Servers. For Windows 8 Server, we are planning, architecting and building a new UX framework around themes that are key to the success of the entire Server product line.
We are looking for a Software Development Engineer experienced in UI Design to help lead, architect, write code, and deliver the next generation of Server Management experiences. In this role, you will report directly to the Development Manager, oversee and help architect the new design, and work closely with many other teams delivering in Windows Server. You will take on the challenge of bridging the existing with the new and have an understanding and appreciation of both user interaction design and systems software. You will also have a record of technical leadership, good planning, and shipping world-class software.
The fifth job posting is from a day later, on November 18, 2009, and is looking for someone in the Software Engineering: Program Management job category who would make sure to work closely with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) for Windows 8:
Are you ready to get closer to Microsoft's best customers and biggest partners while staying in a highly technical role? The new Ecosystem Fundamentals team in Windows is hiring a Senior PM to work closely with OEMs driving continued increases in performance and reliability while providing tools, testing, training and telemetry. The successful candidate for this critical role will ride the Windows 7 wave of success to enabling continued improvements into the ecosystem. This work includes Windows 8 planning, OEM tool and kit ownership, performance testing and analysis focused on improving the hardware/software ecosystem while working closely with OEMs, ODMs, ISVs, and IHVs in order to strengthen Windows partnerships. Now is the time to move into a great role centered in the Windows group and focused on customer satisfaction improvements based on solid engineering.
The sixth job posting arrived on November 20, 2009, requesting a Sr. Manager, Partner Skills Development - Launch Lead who is to change business focus from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in fiscal year 2011. Microsoft's fiscal year starts in July, which is only eight months away. According to Microsoft's roadmaps, the release of Windows 8 is scheduled for release in 2012. Here's the body of the job posting:
Do you want to work in a group that you know is strategic to Microsoft's growth plans? Do you want to have impact on a global scale? Come join the Worldwide Partner Group. Partners generate more than 90% of Microsoft's $40 billion in annual revenue, and at more than 650,000 partners strong, Microsoft has the largest, and best, channel in the industry. Be a part of the team that is driving significant business impact by evolving the Microsoft Partner Program (MSPP) to maximize the leverage of this strategic asset.
Job Purpose/Overview: Do you want to help ready the entire partner ecosystem on all the new Microsoft products and solutions? The Partner Skills Development Team is looking for a senior thought leader and skilled project/product manager to ensure the health of the partner ecosystem through the strategic evolution skills development framework (and its execution) for upcoming Microsoft product launches. For example, in Fy10, the focus will be on Windows Server R2, SQL Server R2, and Wave 14 (Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Exchange 2010) and, as we head into Fy11, the focus will quickly switch to Windows 8. In this role you will lead the execution of partner skills development BOMs - by partner type for the entire partner ecosystem - on a WW basis. This role with interact with and influence individuals from across Microsoft, including individuals within the Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Learning, SMSGR, the product groups (BGs), Operations, and partner segment teams with SMSG.
Finally, the last job posting of the month arrived on November 24, 2009, requesting someone for the Software Engineering: Test job category who wants to work on improving reliability, security, and privacy in Windows 8:
Do you want to be on the cutting edge of detecting the latest security threats in the wild? Are you passionate about improving customers' perception of Windows reliability and performance? Do you want to help our ISVs better understand how they can make their software more secure and reliable? If so, the Detection, Control, and Measurement (DCM) team is for you! The DCM team is dedicated to improving the reliability, security, performance and privacy of Windows by helping to "Detect" inbox issues, "Control" failures, and "Measure" issues and relaying that information back to Microsoft so action can be taken. Some of the core technologies in this team include Windows Error Reporting clients (WER aka Watson/Kernel Crash), Reliability Analysis Component (RAC), Perftrack, and SQM.
The Windows Fundamentals Reliability, Security and Privacy (ReSP) team will improve the quality of Windows 8 by driving the trustworthy computing pillars of reliability, security and privacy in the Windows operating system. We analyze reliability data from hundreds of millions of machines, making data-driven decisions to improve the ecosystem-meaning Windows itself, other Microsoft products, and our partners such as the OEMs, ODMs, chip makers, ISVs and IHVs. We will extend this to measuring the security and privacy of the ecosystem as well. We believe Windows will transparently recover from failures and will drive scenarios to enable this. We broadly own implementing the SDL process inside Windows, and will extend the SDL concepts to reliability, and possibly other Fundamentals. We have strong technology ownership in support of this mission, including advanced detection, control and reporting components such as the client-side portions of Windows Error Reporting (WER), Software Quality Metrics (SQM), Reliability Analysis Component (RAC), and prevention and recovery technologies such as the WinRE, restart manager, fault-tolerant heap, process reflection, RADAR leak detection, and network hang recovery. We will continue to build on our world-class auto-analysis and expert debugging infrastructure which processes millions of user and kernel mode failures, as well as expanding on tools and test infrastructures such as Longhaul testing, and a Fuzz testing lab infrastructure and expertise for testing protocols across Windows.
In the first week of October 2009, we rounded up every minor detail that bloggers had posted on Windows 8, and then at the end of October 2009, we posted about the remaining job postings related to Windows 8 that Microsoft made. Now we're caught up again with the job postings made in November 2009, and we'll be keeping an eye on anything that gets posted in December 2009.
Source: ars technica
