Meet with Companies

Intimate Networking & Hiring Event with Microsoft Azure

Virtual

Hosted by:

Microsoft Azure is a public cloud computing platform with leading market capabilities. We invite you to a special virtual networking and hiring event with the women leaders from the Microsoft Azure organization. During a 90-minute session, you’ll enjoy a keynote address, panel discussion, interactive Q&A, and plenty of networking opportunities.

This is a great opportunity for professionals interested in gaining exclusive insight into the highly-competitive and fast-growing cloud computing market, career advice, important professional connections, and access to exciting job opportunities.

Join us online Wednesday, October 14th, from 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM ET (2:00 PM - 3:30 PM PT).

Agenda (Subject to Change):

5:00 PM ET / 2:00 PM PT - Kick-Off from PowerToFly
5:05 PM ET / 2:05 PM PT - Keynote Address from Marcus Fontoura, Technical Fellow, Azure Compute
5:30 PM ET / 2:30 PM PT - Panel Discussion & Audience Q&A Featuring:
- Melissa Bader, Principal Program Manager - Azure Compute Atlanta Site Lead
- Janaina Bueno, Principal Software Design Engineer
- Sonali Gururaja, Partner Group Engineering Manager
- Pratik Verma, Principal Program Manager - Azure Data Governance
6:25 PM ET / 3:25 PM PT - Closing Remarks
6:30 PM ET / 3:30 PM PT - Event concludes

Microsoft is hiring. If you are interested in Microsoft and open to exploring new career options, this is a prime opportunity to connect with the Microsoft team to learn more and get your questions answered. The Microsoft team will be connecting directly with event registrants who are interested in interviews, especially for the key roles of Software Engineer, Technical Program Manager, and Data Scientist.

What is Microsoft Azure? Azure is an ever-expanding set of cloud computing services to help your organization meet its business challenges. Azure gives you the freedom to build, manage, and deploy applications on a massive, global network using your preferred tools and frameworks. To learn more about Microsoft’s values and commitment to Diversity, Environment, and Innovation, click here.

About PowerToFly: PowerToFly is a women-run startup that works with companies to identify skilled professionals they’d like to network with. Over the past few years, we’ve produced 300+ events across the world with brands like American Express, Deloitte, and Slack, which have resulted in countless hires. Visit http://powertofly.com to learn more.

About PowerToFly’s Events: All RSVP’d attendees are welcome, regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender identity, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, or age. If you require assistance to fully participate in this event, please email hi@powertofly.com, and we will contact you to discuss your specific needs.

Unfortunately, PowerToFly and Microsoft cannot admit outside recruiters to this particular event. Please email hi@powertofly.com if you have any questions about this policy.

Meet The Speakers

Marcus Fontoura

Technical Fellow

Dr. Marcus Fontoura is currently a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, where he works as Chief Architect for Azure compute. In his previous roles at Microsoft, Marcus worked on the production infrastructure for Bing and in several Bing Ads projects. Prior to Microsoft, Marcus worked as staff research scientist and researcher in Google, Yahoo, and IBM Almaden Research Center. Marcus is an ACM Distinguished Member and an IEEE Senior Member. He has more than 25 issued patents (and many others filed) and more than 50 published papers. He has been serving in several program committees over the years, including SIGIR, WWW, WSDM, KDD, and CIKM. You can find more about him at his personal website Fontoura.org.

Janaina Bueno

Principal Software Design Engineer

Janaina Bueno is currently a Principal Software Design Engineer at Microsoft, working in Azure Compute, focusing on changing our control software architecture to use new and innovative hardware technologies. She loves working with her peers and across the organization to improve engineering systems and culture. Janaina is also currently the Lead Board Member for Women in Azure Compute co-hort as well as the co-chair for Women in Azure.

Janaina received her Bachelor in Computer Engineering at UNICAMP (Brazil) in 1995. She has nearly 25 years of working experience, most of which have been at Microsoft since she joined the company in 2000. While at Microsoft, Janaina has worked on multiple products including Bing and Azure, and explored different disciplines such as testing, development and consulting. “I am grateful there are so many opportunities that I didn't need to change companies to change my career or achieve goals.” – Janaina re: working at Microsoft.

Outside work Janaina is married with teenagers who are in high-school and the family has a small dog. Before COVID, she was enjoying archery, personal training, and many gym classes to improve her health (physical and mental). Now, reading lots and lots of books fills her time.

Sonali Gururaja

Partner Group Engineering Manager

Sonali Gururaja is a Partner Group Engineering Manager with Microsoft Azure. She has 20+ years of experience in the industry shipping various products and services at Microsoft, including leading engineering teams through the releases of Azure Cosmos DB, Azure DocumentDB, Azure SQLDB, Microsoft SQL Server, Visual Studio, Application Center, and Microsoft Operations Management Suite.

Sonali is a strong advocate of diversity and increasing opportunities for women in technology. She's lead many initiatives at work to hire, retain and grow women in engineering. Sonali also supports and volunteers with non-profit organizations that are working on improving the pipeline of girls entering STEM.

Melissa Bader

Principal Program Manager - Azure Compute Atlanta Site Lead

Melissa Bader is a PMP, PMI-ACP(Agile), and Scrum Master certified enterprise architect (MCSE + Security, Cisco CCNP) with technical project lead/manager experience in various disciplines.

Melissa joined Microsoft in 2018 as a Principal Program Manager (PPM) for Fleet Analytics in the Production Infrastructure Engineering Org, ensuring Data Quality for all Fleet information. She is now working as a PPM in the Azure Compute org as part of the Application Platform team and is currently the Compute Site Lead for the Atlanta engineering office.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Melissa was a Program Manager at Google running Datacenter Upgrades globally. While with Google, she also led the training and career development program for all data center employees globally, approximately 6500 FTEs.

More on Melissa: She recently enrolled back to school at Georgia Tech to obtain a master’s certification in Data Science to complement her Masters in CS from GA State. She is also the co-chair of the Women@ ERG in the Atlanta office and is passionate about teaching children how to code and volunteer often in this capacity. In her free time she admits to obsessively playing tennis.

Pratik Verma

Principal Program Manager - Azure Data Governance

Pratik Verma is a Principal Program Manager of Azure Data Governance at Microsoft. He is an experienced serial entrepreneur, founder & C-level exec with a demonstrated history of working at software and healthcare startups. Pratik's skills include security, databases, chemistry, management, and building revenue for the 0->1 phase of startups.