Ben Watrous
Principle Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft
Redmond, Washington, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBen Watrous is a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft with 12+ years building and leading cloud and HPC solutions, particularly for Azure Batch and CycleCloud. He combines deep hands-on expertise in Python, Java, C++ and Bash with architect-level knowledge of cloud security and best practices to drive adoption of high-performance computing in finance, life sciences, computational chemistry and manufacturing. His career threads product development, customer-facing solution architecture and program management—from early FPGA and distributed rendering work to orchestrating large-scale cloud workloads. At Cycle Computing and Microsoft he translated complex on-premise HPC needs into scalable cloud services, frequently engaging directly with customers to shape product direction. Based in Redmond, he leverages an electrical engineering background from Cornell to bridge hardware-aware thinking with cloud-native software design. Colleagues know him for pairing rigorous technical depth with pragmatic delivery and cross-team influence.
12 years of coding experience
23 years of employment as a software developer
BS, Electrical Engineering, BS, Electrical Engineering at Cornell University
Github Skills (39)
hpc-cluster10
microsoft-azure10
vnet10
job-scheduler9
slurm9
filesystem9
nodemanager9
azure-batch9
azure9
azure-marketplace9
blender8
miniconda8
java8
nfs8
nodejs7
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
Azure/cyclecloud-symphony
Aug 2018 - Nov 2025
CycleCloud project to enable use of Spectrum Symphony job scheduler in Azure CycleCloud HPC clusters.
Contributions:38 reviews, 42 PRs, 83 pushes in 7 years 4 months
azurehpc-clusterjob-scheduler
Azure/cyclecloud-blender
Aug 2018 - Jan 2020
CycleCloud project to enable running the Blender animation software on Azure CycleCloud HPC clusters.
Contributions:2 releases, 1 PR, 7 pushes in 1 year 5 months
animationazureblenderhpc-cluster
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