Principal Technical Program Manager

Overview

Do you enjoy solving problems, looking at challenges through a different lens, and collaborating closely with customers to innovate new solutions to complex problems? Do you jump with excitement at the opportunity to identify trends and provide unique business solutions? Do you want to join a team where learning about new technology or solutions is part of our everyday work?

The Industry Solutions Engineering (ISE) team at Microsoft is a global engineering organization that partners side-by-side with customers, on a per-project basis, to collaboratively innovate on transformational AI solutions to solve their challenging business problems; from inception to production. We develop broadly applicable, high-impact solution patterns and open-source software assets in collaboration with Microsoft product teams, partners, and open-source communities. This role will primarily involve working with customers from the Retail & Consumer Goods industries.

We are hiring a Principal Technical Program Manager to drive high-impact engineering projects through collaborative leadership and deep technical expertise in program strategy, risk management, and cross-functional execution. You'll work as part of a cross-functional team of software engineers, data scientists, and designers, partnering side-by-side with high-impact customers and their engineers to build innovative solutions. You'll bridge technical and business worlds, participating in technical discussions about architecture and implementation approaches while synthesizing complex information to drive clarity across engineering teams, customers, and stakeholders. As a domain expert and strategic facilitator, you'll guide collaborative decision-making on technical solutions, coordinate dependencies across multiple teams, and ensure engineering outcomes translate into measurable business impact for both Microsoft and customers while maintaining trusted relationships with customer leadership.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our team prides itself on embracing a growth mindset, innovating to empower others, and collaborating 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

Analysis of Customer and Market Signals

• Leads customer engagements and market research to identify complex opportunities and gaps in multiple feature areas; tests hypotheses and proposes solution roadmap.
• Scales impact by identifying top priorities for in-demand subject matter experts, manages backlog and assets that help scale top customer patterns, and accelerates developer success by building trust and sharing cross-organizational best practices.

Product/Service Definition

• Designs and proposes architecture and solutions for complex technical needs, collaborates with internal and external partners, and defines program goals and success metrics for multiple feature areas.

Product/Service Development

• Manages cross-functional projects and teams for multiple feature areas of a product or service.
• Drives customer engagements to deliver well-defined products that generate immediate customer value and high-quality, broadly applicable software contributions to Microsoft products and to open-source communities.
• Participates in hands-on coding activities to maintain up-to-date technical knowledge.

Product/Service Performance

• Partners with others to collect and analyze performance metrics, monitor progress, and derive insights for multiple feature areas.
• Influences product roadmaps by developing relationships with product teams, sharing insights and data from customer engagements, and driving executive communication.
• Understands common AI architecture patterns and trade-offs, best practices for cloud engineering, developer productivity issues, etc.

Embodies our culture and values.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree AND demonstrated years of experience in engineering leadership, product/technical program management, or product development OR equivalent experience.
• Strong technical program management experience in managing stakeholder relationships and engagements, triaging, and managing priorities.
• Demonstrated years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
• Enjoys travel and is comfortable with travel up to 25%.

Additional Or Preferred Qualifications (PQs)

• Customer-facing project-delivery experience.
• Experience working as part of geographically dispersed, diverse, and virtual teams.
• Proficiency in creating technical reports, white papers, or case studies.

At Microsoft, we are seeking people who have a passion for the positive impact technology can have on communities and for making a difference in the world. Within ISE, you will find a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, personal and cultural experiences which are vital to our success with our customers. It’s an informal and flexible work environment and you’ll be welcome to work in the way that best enables you to get your job done.

#ISEngineering

#WSS

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.

Key skills/competency

• Technical Program Management
• AI Solutions Development
• Customer Engagement
• Cross-functional Leadership
• Risk Management
• Architecture Design
• Stakeholder Management
• Open Source Contributions
• Business Impact Analysis
• Cloud Engineering Best Practices