Director AI Program Manager

• Redmond, Washington, United States
• Atlanta, Georgia, United States
• Austin, Texas, United States
• Multiple Locations, United States

• Job number 1546530
• Date posted May 12, 2023
• Travel 0-25 %
• Profession Program Management
• Role type Individual Contributor
• Employment type Full-Time
• Work site Up to 100% work from home

Cloud Operations + Innovation (CO+I) is the team behind one of the world’s largest Cloud Infrastructures, responsible for powering all Microsoft online Products and Services as well as powering Microsoft’s “Cloud First” mission. Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide, and we are looking for a Director AI Program Manager to help achieve that mission.  
 
If you want to have fundamental impact on how Microsoft’s Cloud is deployed and operated globally, want to be involved with one of the most strategically important teams at Microsoft, if trusted technical and business acumen, leadership, creativity, and out of the box thinking are some of the skills you possess - this job maybe you!  

You should be an experienced Director AI Program Manager with deep technical and business expertise, extraordinary leadership and demonstrated large-scale technical program management success. You should have exceptional industry knowledge, technical depth in delivery execution, and have the executive presence to lead complex and time sensitive initiatives.  

The CO+I AI Inflection team is a newly formed group focused on delivering various platform services to our global AI customers.   This role will require deep partnership throughout all of Microsoft as these programs will be on the leading edge of innovation and will include driving pilots and other experiments that shape our ongoing commitment to deliver AI platform services on schedule.   In this role you will lead a team that will be required to establish clear metrics, develop technical engineering requirements for process automation, drive down variation across key deployment milestones, drive accountability across partner organizations, remove roadblocks to keep programs on schedule, organize, track and deliver the hundreds of specific projects that make up an AI platform service.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

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

Analysis of Customer and Market Signals

• Identifies highly complex opportunities and gaps in the implementation of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries including comparison of various quality and performance metrics to various solutions. May define and lead customer engagements to solicit feedback and understand their experiences with Microsoft’s products and services. Acts as a subject matter expert in performing highly complex market research in collaboration with other teams, conducting competitive analyses, and examining customer and technology-related industry trends, as well as industry-specific requirements or regulations. Brings product usage, product telemetry, and service data together to identify highly complex patterns, generate hypotheses, and build a plan to have a impact on the product.
• Demonstrates and builds experiences across multiple groups or divisions. Coaches internal team to develop problem statements and form hypotheses of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries to address highly complex business, program, and customer needs, and/or market opportunities; identifies all dependencies of other features. Owns and performs experiments to test hypotheses and inform decisions on what multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) to introduce across divisional boundaries. Establishes clarity of patterns of root problem and how it relates with previously seen trends across customers; determines the customers/sectors impacted, and uses research evidence to influence feature prioritization. Determines and leads large process improvements to quickly scope insights. Leads and drives alignment between the customer, the market, internal stakeholders, leadership, and the goals and strategy of Microsoft. Collaborates with others (e.g., Engineering, Marketing, Design) to ensure that they can satisfy customer requirements. Evaluates the market size and explores new opportunities to determine for greatest value to the business. Defines solution options and proposed solution roadmap across multiple feature areas within multiple stages.

Product/Service Definition

• Works with Software and Hardware Engineering to design architecture and integrated customer solutions to highly complex technical needs for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Reviews design documents and architecture proposals, and may provide approvals. Understands what options are available and leads others to identify and select best option for needs, and creates new solutions if needed. Works with architects and technical partners to develop future proof architecture. Works with internal and external technical partners and/or architects to represent technical solutions to customers.
• Defines the program(s) goals and prioritization for the multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) they own across divisional boundaries. Translates the needs of the organization and other teams into program goals and prioritized deliverables based on data insights. Provides solutions or recommendations to key stakeholders to make complex decisions based on data-driven identified risks and tradeoffs.
• Defines success criteria and performance metrics (e.g., Objectives and Key Results [OKRs], Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] such as quality and performance) of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries and works with Software and Hardware Engineering to ensure needed telemetry is developed. Mentors others on how to define success and performance metrics. Deeply understands the return on investment and presents it to leadership.

Product/Service Development

• Creates relationships to drive orchestration and integration efforts for the development and implementation process of multiple features areas (e.g., product, services) for large and highly complex cross functional projects with internal teams and external partners. Influences leadership on objectives. Collaborates and coordinates across the business to ensure alignment and gain buy in on product management and release, including tradeoffs, adjustments, and improvements as feasible.
• Partners with the engineering team to contribute, prioritize, and deliver on the roadmap for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Understands the value proposition for the multiple feature areas across divisional boundaries and answers technical questions on the multiple feature areas they own across divisional boundaries. Justifies capacity requirements and advocates for the right resource allocation.
• Tracks, coordinates, and communicates end-to-end project schedules (e.g., epics, sprint/semester plans, milestones, timelines, releases) for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Establishes and monitors processes, and drives accountability with stakeholders for following the established schedule and processes. Tracks and manages dependencies to enable cohesive, connected user scenarios, and to identify potential risk areas and escalate appropriately. Makes adjustments or course corrections when projects are not aligned to schedules or goals.
• Drives the development of the staging and implementation plan for piloting/release in alignment with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries, it's development timeline, and the introduction to the different programs. Collaborates with stakeholders to monitor progress and adjust as needed.
• Leads governance programs and processes to ensure that specific performance requirements and standards are met throughout the development lifecycle (e.g., quality, compliance privacy, security, safety, accessibility).
• Validates use-case and scenario outcomes, and performance targets that are being achieved. Drives continuous quality improvements of the delivery. Writes readable and extensible test cases from scratch to test code and improve quality.

Product/Service Performance

• Provides expertise to partner with others (e.g., Data Science, Software and Hardware Engineering) to collect performance metrics (e.g., Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] such as usage, quality, speed and, cost and performance), monitor and report on progress (e.g., business reviews), and derive deep insights that lead to productive courses of action to improve development, iteration, and implementation of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Leverages customer listening systems, telemetry, engagements (e.g., interviews, surveys), etc., to develop insights on product and/or service performance and customer needs. Shares insights with Engineering and other partners. Forms hypotheses to highly complex technical needs, performs experiments, and iterates to drive improvement in specific performance metrics that have measurable impact.
• Leads the customer supportability experience and provides documentation (e.g., troubleshooting guidelines, best practices, blogs). Monitors how products and/or services are being used; tracks and understands a root-cause analysis for live-site incidents with little guidance from others. Understands and drives improvements in the support process, including both forums and communities. Collaborates with and provides deep insight to Software and Hardware Engineering, Customer Service and Support (CSS), and other partners (e.g., business-process owners) on broad live-site improvement opportunities.
• Acts as a technical advisor to educate and evangelize the feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries they work on with customers via meetings, presentations, and other forums. Defines and leads direct customer (internal and/or external) engagements to solicit feedback and understand their experiences with the feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Helps deliver sales enablement and field support. Participates in business deals, creates strategic partnerships, and participates in pre-sales meetings with customers.

Other 

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Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree AND 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 3+ years experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

Other Requirements:

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to, the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree AND 10+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development
  •  OR equivalent experience.
• 8+ years experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
• 1+ year(s) experience reading and/or writing code (e.g., sample documentation, product demos).

Technical Program Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $133,600 - $256,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $173,200 - $282,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
 

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the .

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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