Olutunde Makinde: From Lagos to Redmond, a Microsoft IT engineer’s journey

A career in Microsoft Digital, the company’s internal IT organization, puts employees at the center of one of the world’s most complex and forward‑leaning enterprise environments. This is the team that runs Microsoft on Microsoft technology and services—maintaining more than a million computing devices, enabling global collaboration, and shaping the employee experience for more than 200,000 people.

To accomplish these huge tasks, it’s essential to cultivate a range of perspectives, expertise, and lived experiences.

Olutunde Makinde is an example of this.

“A friend once laughed at me back in college when I said I wanted to work at Microsoft, like it was impossible. But I knew I could achieve the impossible if I could just be focused. I never gave up.”

Olutunde Makinde, senior service engineer, Microsoft Digital

Makinde, a senior service engineer in Microsoft Digital, came to the company the long way around—roughly 7,000 miles away from the Redmond, Washington, headquarters, in fact. He’s originally from Lagos, Nigeria.

As a global organization, Microsoft builds teams where people with different experiences and life journeys actively influence how products, services, and internal platforms are designed. Makinde, commonly known around the office as “Tunde” (“rhymes with Sunday,” he notes), embodies that diverse approach, bringing his unique insights and experiences to critical work at the company.

“A friend once laughed at me back in college when I said I wanted to work at Microsoft, like it was impossible,” Makinde says. “But I knew I could achieve the impossible if I could just be focused. I never gave up.”

Launching an IT career in Nigeria

Makinde’s journey to Microsoft began with earning a degree in computer engineering in Lagos, after which he found work as a network engineer. He spent the next several years developing his skills through certifications and other learning opportunities.

“I did a lot of self-paced training, learning how to configure Cisco routers. Eventually I became a Cisco-certified network professional (CCNP),” Makinde says. “Around that time, I had a friend who was preparing for Windows Server 2008 certifications, and through his study materials I started learning more about Microsoft and its products.”

Makinde’s first direct encounter with Microsoft came in 2014, when the company he worked for received a contract to deploy the first Microsoft Azure cloud installation in Nigeria.  

“I spent the last day of 2014 and the first day of 2015 at the customer site, figuring out how to connect their on-premises network to Azure,” Makinde says. “It had never been done before in Nigeria, and taking up that challenge really propelled me into the world of Microsoft-specific technology.”

From there, Makinde set his sights on a career at Microsoft. He parlayed his initial exposure to cloud architecture into a focus on Azure, as well as Amazon Web Services. After spending some time in the United Kingdom, he achieved his goal when he was hired by the Microsoft Digital team in 2022. He moved to the United States in 2025.

He credits support from his family, especially his wife, with helping him achieve his dreams.

“My wife was a pillar of support through every career transition, from Nigeria to the UK to the United States,” Makinde says. “She believed in me when I faced rejections, celebrated with me when I finally got the offer, and now keeps me grounded whenever work gets intense. I couldn’t have made this journey without her.”

Making an impact from day one

Kathren Korsky, a principal technical program manager in Microsoft Digital and Makinde’s hiring manager, remembers the impression he made right away. It was clear that Makinde’s experience and technical background were major assets.

“What caught my attention was how well-prepared he was for the conversation and how well he communicated,” Korsky says. “The stories he shared about his work with Azure deployment in Nigeria really drew my interest. But I was also intrigued by how he was able to bridge technology with the business world, working with different banks across the continent to gather requirements, understand them, and build solutions.”

Upon being hired at Microsoft, he initially worked remotely from the UK on a Redmond-based device and application management team. The team was looking to deploy Cloud PC internally and needed a system in which employees could request access and get approvals to use Cloud PCs.

“He was able to stand up a full Power Automate workflow within a short period, and with a very high degree of quality,” Korsky says. “Rarely did anyone find any defects or bugs in his system.”

Makinde’s designs drove value moving forward as well, as the team made updates to his initial workflows.

“His design was so strong that we were basically able to follow exactly what he had created in Power Platform and build that exact same design in ServiceNow. It really expedited that whole process.”

Kathren Korsky, principal technical program manager, Microsoft Digital

ServiceNow was more commonly used for systems that involved access requests and approvals, but when a platform update from Power Automate was initiated the team found Makinde’s original design was durable enough to weather the shift.

“His design was so strong that we were basically able to follow exactly what he had created in Power Platform and build that exact same design in ServiceNow,” Korsky says. “It really expedited that whole process.”

Driving efficiency and managing change

Since moving to the United States to work at company headquarters, Makinde has continued to push important projects forward—working with different stakeholders to deploy policy changes across Microsoft, managing the Change Advisory Board (CAB) intake process, and driving configuration updates for security and first-party product deployments.

“There’s a lot of diligence required to see the edge cases happening, to pay attention to them, and to watch out for potential problems. Tunde stops rollouts regularly to flag potential defects or risks, which prevents issues from interrupting our work and reducing productivity.”

Jeff Duncan, principal service engineering manager, Microsoft Digital

Makinde learned how to assess change requests and understand risk profiles, as well as enforce best practices for managing change within the security environment. Within about a year, he was able to take the lead in the space and own the deployment process.

A single misconfigured policy can cause major disruption. Makinde’s role puts him in position to be the checkpoint that prevents incidents before they happen.

“There’s a lot of diligence required to see the edge cases happening, to pay attention to them, and to watch out for potential problems,” says Jeff Duncan, principal service engineering manager in Microsoft Digital and Makinde’s manager. “Tunde stops rollouts regularly to flag potential defects or risks, which prevents issues from interrupting our work and reducing productivity.”

Softer skills like transparency, collaboration, and clear communication across levels and teams are key aspects of Makinde’s work as well.

“Tunde is thoughtful and detail-oriented, and he’s very good at explaining the decision-making process when he provides overviews for leadership,” Duncan says. “There’s rational, logical reasoning behind the decisions he makes.”

Makinde has implemented new efficiencies in how he manages the CAB and deployment service using AI. This includes CABBIE—an AI-powered agent that automates CAB communications. For Intune deployments, he uses AI to streamline deployment coordination and package reviews. These innovations reflect our Customer Zero approach to AI adoption here in Microsoft Digital.

“We run weekly CAB meetings to review change requests. That comes with a lot of communication work — status updates, follow-ups, coordination with stakeholders. It was all manual,” Makinde says. “CABBIE pulls the data from Azure DevOps, generates the emails, updates requests, and logs approvals automatically. It saves time and reduces errors.”

Success at Microsoft Digital: Aptitude and curiosity

As the organization at the center of the company’s own digital transformation, we in Microsoft Digital function as a living showcase of what’s possible with Microsoft technology. Our team tests new capabilities at enterprise scale as Customer Zero for Microsoft, identifying gaps and providing insights to ensure our customers benefit from what we’ve learned.

Because the impact of Microsoft Digital extends far beyond internal systems, team members have to set the standard for digital excellence. They must demonstrate what enterprise transformation looks like in practice and empower customers with the confidence to pursue their own modernization journeys.

 Hiring talented people like Makinde is essential to this mission.

“There are three core traits I look for when hiring—aptitude, attitude, and curiosity,” Korsky says. “Aptitude is not only what you currently know, but your propensity and desire to learn and grow those skills. Attitude goes hand in hand with that—are you willing to demonstrate grit and perseverance? And then curiosity, because so much of what we do from an innovation perspective requires a willingness to challenge assumptions and think of completely new ways of doing things.”

Makinde’s journey here at Microsoft Digital embodies and illustrates the company’s larger story: how technical expertise, innovative thinking, and a commitment to continuous learning combine to deliver world-class results.

“I’m now up to 25 certifications, and I continue to learn how to do more at Microsoft to positively impact the organization and protect our employees’ experience across applications and devices.”

Olutunde Makinde, senior service engineer, Microsoft Digital

That attitude of persistent curiosity and the willingness to keep learning continue to fuel Makinde’s experience at Microsoft. 

“Self-improvement is a way of life for me that has driven my career forward,” Makinde says. “At an early stage in my career, I did a lot of self-training—from learning how to configure Cisco routers and switches, to migrating on-premises workloads to Azure and managing cloud resources. I’m now up to 25 certifications, and I continue to learn how to do more at Microsoft to positively impact the organization and protect our employees’ experience across applications and devices.”