Microsoft to switch internal focus to Windows 8 in July 2010

 
The first job posting is from November 3, 2009 & is looking for somebody to fill the Application Engineering: Check job section by working on critical updates that will be delivered through Windows Update for Windows 8:

Seven more job postings were posted last month that mention Windows 8. From them, they can glean a few small tidibits about Windows 7's successor.
With another month gone (boy that two flew by), it is 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 they saw two job postings regarding the successor to both Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2, each two offering a small glimpse in to what Microsoft is thinking about. Before they go through them in chronological order, they ought to note that a quantity of them have already been removed & others have been slightly reworded, so what you see below is the original unedited versions Microsoft first posted & which they saved until now.

 The WinSE UX check team needs an strong SDET to create new check automation, write robust check designs, designing check cases, debug reported issues across Windows Shell & related UX, help establish sound check engineering processes, & influence & contribute to the serviceability of Win8. As an SDET on this team, you'll design, implement, & execute various types of check automation, including functional, integration & release tests. You will also have several opportunities to write check tools, & work on security bugs, & will be interacting with PM & Dev counterparts in a dev/test/pm trio, & various partner teams. In this team, you will have an opportunity to ship important updates for Windows to solve critical reliability, performance & security issues by the Windows Update mechanism. This position requires strong communication & collaboration skills, as well as a drive for results. Overall, this position is best suited for a strong SDET looking for an opportunity to showcase your skills & innovate.

 The WinSE UX Check team is two of the most fun teams in Windows Sustaining Engineering to work with! They release hot-fixes, security patches & Service packs for all Windows platforms on a regular basis. They 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 glare of publicity, & if you enjoy the thrill of solving critical problems, you have come to the right place!!!

The second job posting arrived soon after, on November 4, 2009, asking for another Application Engineering: Check employee who will be doing various forms of testing internationally:

 The Windows International Check OOB (Out of Band) team is handling a variety of International check projects including Windows Small Business Server (SBS), Home Server, stand-alone out of band releases for Windows 7/Windows 8, & down-level support packages requested by different business divisions by utilizing a state-of-the art seller outsourcing model.

The third job posting arrived a week later on November 11, 2009, looking for a Application Engineering: Development employee who would help the Windows Update team prepare for Windows 8. It's since been removed, but we have saved the text:

 As a team member in this position, you will write check designs for World-Readiness- (Globalization & Localizability) as well as Localization Testing, & create & manage check tools & guidelines. You will also perform globalization code reviews as part of the OOB method using tools & globalization guidelines. In addition, you will must engage with Program Managers, Developers, International Project Managers & partner SDETs to collaborate on specification reviews, scheduling as well as budgeting & planning. Check execution will be done by seller check resources in Beijing, China, so management of remote seller resource will also be necessary.

 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 as well as a UI application. They talk to the update servers using web services & they have special protocols in place to deal with the gigantic scale of the process.

 This is a great time to join us. Our team owns the Windows Update Client & our code delivers application & updates to over 600 million computers. They done up work on Windows 7, & are pushing forth on Windows 8 planning & preparation. There's opportunities to work on a quantity of hard problems, including third-party application updating, updating virtual machines while they are turned off (turns out this is hard!), & delivering full applications, among others. To help us charge full steam on these fronts, they are looking for skilled & passionate application engineers.

 Windows Server is the top-selling server operating process & 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, they are taking that experience to the next level by helping to make IT Professionals more effective & more productive by shipping a product they will love to use.

The fourth job posting made its appearance on November 17, 2009 asking for somebody for the Application Engineering: Development job section. It specifically talked about Windows 8 Server as well as a new UX framework before being significantly reworded:

 They are looking for a Application Development Engineer experienced in UI Design to help lead, architect, write code, & deliver the next generation of Server Management experiences. In this role, you will document directly to the Development Manager, oversee & help architect the new design, & work closely with lots of other teams delivering in Windows Server. You will take on the challenge of bridging the existing with the new & have an understanding & appreciation of both user interaction design & systems application. You will also have a record of technical leadership, nice planning, & shipping world-class application.

 They work closely with UX as well as a passionate PM & Check team to deliver world-beating user experiences for managing Windows Servers. For Windows 8 Server, they are planning, architecting & building a new UX framework around themes that are key to the success of the entire Server product line.

 Are you ready to get closer to Microsoft's best customers & 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 & reliability while providing tools, testing, training & telemetry. The successful candidate for this critical role will ride the Windows 7 wave of success to enabling continued improvements in to the ecosystem. This work includes Windows 8 planning, OEM gizmo & kit ownership, performance testing & analysis focused on improving the hardware/software ecosystem while working closely with OEMs, ODMs, ISVs, & IHVs in order to strengthen Windows partnerships. Now is the time to move in to a great role centered in the Windows group & focused on customer satisfaction improvements based on solid engineering.

The fifth job posting is from a day later, on November 18, 2009, & is looking for somebody in the Application Engineering: Program Management job section who would make sure to work closely with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs), Independent Application Vendors (ISVs), & Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) for Windows 8:

 Do you need to work in a group that you know is strategic to Microsoft's growth designs? Do you need to have impact on a global scale? Come join the Worldwide Partner Group. Partners generate over 90% of Microsoft's $40 billion in annual revenue, & at over 650,000 partners strong, Microsoft has the largest, & 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.

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 four 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:

Finally, the last job posting of the month arrived on November 24, 2009, requesting somebody for the Application Engineering: Check job section who wants to work on improving reliability, security, & privacy in Windows 8:

 Job Purpose/Overview: Do you need to help ready the entire partner ecosystem on all the new Microsoft products & solutions? The Partner Skills Development Team is looking for a senior thought leader & skilled project/product manager to ensure the health of the partner ecosystem through the strategic evolution skills development framework (& its execution) for upcoming Microsoft product launches. For example, in Fy10, the focus will be on Windows Server R2, SQL Server R2, & Wave 14 (Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, & Exchange 2010) &, as they head in to 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 & influence individuals from across Microsoft, including individuals within the Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Learning, SMSGR, the product groups (BGs), Operations, & partner segment teams with SMSG.

 Do you need 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 & performance? Do you need to help our ISVs better understand how they can make their application more secure & reliable? If so, the Detection, Control, & Measurement (DCM) team is for you! The DCM team is dedicated to improving the reliability, security, performance & privacy of Windows by helping to "Detect" inbox issues, "Control" failures, & "Measure" issues & relaying that information back to Microsoft so action can be taken. A quantity of the core technologies in this team include Windows Error Reporting clients (WER aka Watson/Kernel Crash), Reliability Analysis Component (RAC), Perftrack, & SQM.

 The Windows Fundamentals Reliability, Security & Privacy (ReSP) team will improve the quality of Windows 8 by driving the trustworthy computing pillars of reliability, security & privacy in the Windows operating process. They analyze reliability information from hundreds of millions of machines, making data-driven decisions to improve the ecosystem-meaning Windows itself, other Microsoft products, & our partners such as the OEMs, ODMs, chip makers, ISVs & IHVs. They will extend this to measuring the security & privacy of the ecosystem as well. They believe Windows will transparently recover from failures & will drive scenarios to enable this. They broadly own implementing the SDL method inside Windows, & will extend the SDL concepts to reliability, & possibly other Fundamentals. They have strong technology ownership in support of this mission, including advanced detection, control & reporting components such as the client-side portions of Windows Error Reporting (WER), Application Quality Metrics (SQM), Reliability Analysis Component (RAC), & prevention & recovery technologies such as the WinRE, restart manager, fault-tolerant heap, method reflection, RADAR leak detection, & network hang recovery. They will continue to build on our world-class auto-analysis & expert debugging infrastructure which processes millions of user & kernel mode failures, as well as expanding on tools & check infrastructures such as Longhaul testing, as well as a Fuzz testing lab infrastructure & expertise for testing protocols across Windows.

In the first week of October 2009, they rounded up every minor detail that bloggers had posted on Windows 8, & then at the finish of October 2009, they posted about the remaining job postings related to Windows 8 that Microsoft made. Now we are caught up again with the job postings made in November 2009, & we'll be keeping an eye on anything that gets posted in December 2009.