Principal Product Manager

Overview

As a Principal Product Manager on the MAI Suggestions team, within the STCI organization at Microsoft AI (MAI), you will lead a significant product area within MAI Suggestions, initially focused on Experiences and Growth. This role is designed for an experienced individual contributor who operates with high autonomy, thrives in ambiguous problem spaces, and drives meaningful customer and business impact through strong product judgment and cross-team leadership.

While the initial charter is centered on user experiences and growth, the role is designed to evolve across product areas within the Suggestions team. You are expected to build deep product fundamentals, reusable frameworks, and domain understanding that enable you to take on different problem spaces over time (e.g., quality, personalization, platform, or new experiences), based on business priorities.

You will work closely with engineering, design, data science, and partner teams to define product direction, lead complex initiatives, and deliver step-function improvements in engagement, adoption, and task success across MAI surfaces such as Search, Browsing, and Copilot experiences.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

• Own product direction and outcomes for a major area within MAI Suggestions, initially focused on Experiences and Growth—from problem framing through execution to measurable customer and business impact.
• Set and sustain a high‑velocity product operating rhythm by creating clarity, generating energy, and reducing friction—accelerating decision‑making and setting a high bar for pace, ownership, and execution across cross‑functional teams.
• Enable rapid shipping, learning, and iteration by leveraging AI‑powered tooling and tight cross‑functional collaboration to compress delivery cycles, increase experimentation throughput, and deliver impact ahead of the curve.
• Identify and lead high‑impact opportunities to improve user engagement, activation, retention, and task success using data, experimentation, and deep customer insights.
• Frame ambiguous problem spaces effectively, define clear success metrics, and translate insights into well‑prioritized product bets and roadmaps.
• Lead cross‑team and cross‑org initiatives, influencing partner teams to deliver cohesive, high‑quality experiences across MAI surfaces.
• Partner closely with engineering and data science to make informed trade‑offs across UX quality, velocity, scalability, and model performance.
• Define and evolve metrics, evaluation frameworks, and experiments to assess experience quality, growth impact, and long‑term value.
• Act as a product thought leader, shaping principles, best practices, and reusable approaches that scale beyond a single problem area.
• Communicate product strategy, trade‑offs, and outcomes to senior stakeholders, driving alignment and informed decision‑making.
• Mentor and raise the bar for other PMs through design reviews, strategic guidance, and shared ownership of product excellence.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development. OR equivalent experience.
• Proven track record of leading large-scope initiatives with measurable customer and business impact.
• Strong product judgment and strategic thinking, with the ability to connect customer needs to product direction and business outcomes.
• Deep customer empathy and UX intuition, especially in consumer-scale or AI-powered experiences.
• Strong analytical skills and comfort using data, experimentation, and evaluation frameworks to drive decisions.
• Experience influencing without authority, aligning senior stakeholders across teams.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.
• Experience mentoring other product managers is a plus.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree AND 12+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development. OR equivalent experience.
• 4+ years experience taking a product, feature, or experience to market (e.g., design, addressing product market fit, and launch, internal tool/framework).
• 6+ years experience improving product metrics for a product, feature, or experience in a market (e.g., growing customer base, expanding customer usage, avoiding customer churn).
• 6+ years experience disrupting a market for a product, feature, or experience (e.g., competitive disruption, taking the place of an established competing product).

Key skills/competency

• Product Management
• AI-powered Experiences
• Customer Engagement
• Growth Strategy
• Cross-functional Leadership
• Data Analysis
• Experimentation
• UX Design
• Strategic Thinking
• Stakeholder Management
• Roadmapping