Microsoft

What Microsoft does

Headquarters are at One Microsoft Way in Redmond, Washington. For fiscal 2026, the company reported three reportable segments. Productivity and Business Processes covers Microsoft 365, LinkedIn and Dynamics. Intelligent Cloud holds Azure, GitHub and other server and cloud products, plus enterprise services. More Personal Computing groups Windows, Surface, Xbox, and search advertising through Bing and Copilot.

At June 30, 2026, 121,000 full-time staff were in the US and 102,000 were in other countries. Operations, including product support and consulting, had 89,000 people at that date. Product research and development had 77,000, about 35% of the fiscal 2026 total. Sales and marketing had 43,000 and general and administration 14,000 at the same date.

Where Microsoft hires

The company lists about 14 million square feet of space in King County, Washington at June 30, 2026, used for engineering, sales, marketing and operations. About 12 million square feet of that is owned, on about 520 acres at the Redmond headquarters. The other 2 million or so is leased. Across all sites, space at that date totaled 112 million square feet, with 65 million in the US and 47 million in other countries.

China, India, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden held the largest owned properties abroad at June 30, 2026. Leased space was largest in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The annual report describes its sites beyond King County as offices, datacenters and research and development facilities.

Job titles and levels you will see

H-1B labor condition applications (LCAs) certified for Microsoft in the federal fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 numbered 8,065. About 62% of them, 4,972 filings, were for software developer roles. Data scientist roles drew 698 certified filings in fiscal 2025, and computer systems engineer and architect roles drew 564. Information technology project managers accounted for 499 filings that year, and business intelligence analysts for 201. The counts follow federal occupation groups rather than Microsoft's own job titles.

The company's internship pages, as of October 13, 2026, name job families such as Software Engineering, Product Management, Technical Program Management, Product Design, UX Research, Data & Applied Science and Hardware.

Workforce and hiring patterns

Certified LCAs for Microsoft climbed from 7,758 in federal fiscal 2023 to 11,980 in fiscal 2024, then fell to 8,065 in fiscal 2025. On July 6, 2026, the company said it was eliminating about 4,800 roles, about 2.1% of its global workforce, mostly in its Commercial and Xbox organizations. A Washington WARN notice filed the same day lists 605 positions in Redmond, with layoffs effective September 4, 2026.

A policy update dated September 9, 2025 set three office days a week. Puget Sound employees living within 50 miles of a Microsoft office were to start by the end of February 2026. The update said dates for other US offices would follow, with planning outside the US to begin in 2026.

Good to know before you apply

• Microsoft's hiring page, as of October 13, 2026, says most interviews involve 2 to 4 conversations of up to an hour each with possible teammates and colleagues from other teams.
• Each posting states an office expectation, from 0 days a week (remote) to fully on-site. Remote postings are open to anyone in the listed country.
• Explore Microsoft is a 12-week summer software engineering internship for first- and second-year college students. The four-week Discovery Program takes rising first-year students in Redmond or Atlanta.
• Office rules differ by organization, so ask below how your target team applies them.