Principal Product Manager

Overview

The Azure High Performance Computing & Artificial Intelligence (HPC & AI) compute platform team defines and delivers the hardware roadmap, software, and services that enable our users to run technical computing workloads in Azure - extreme scale AI training and inference including large language models, traditional HPC modelling and simulations, remote visualization, and immersive gaming experiences. We are responsible for providing Azure customers with supercomputer-class capabilities to accelerate their research, drive competitive differentiation, and finding answers to some of the most difficult questions of science and industry.

We are looking for a Principal Product Manager with expertise in AI who has a proven track record working with complex and distributed computer systems serving the needs of mission critical customers. This role requires a candidate with an ability to articulate a vision, inspire and get key stakeholder buy-in and delivery, model Microsoft values and lead cross-organization teams to program success.

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

Leverages AI to anticipate customers? unmet or unknown needs and market opportunities for enhancements or development and new products/services of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries via quantitative (e.g., usage, telemetry) and qualitative analyses (e.g., customer usage, various listening systems, feedback channels of market and industry trends), analyzes security and ethical compliance, looks for patterns in the data across a portfolio, and scopes the impact and prioritization of a problem. Brings together internal and external customer groups around a specific scenario and engages in direct 1:1 (e.g., visits, interviews) or many (e.g., social media, events) customer engagements to solicit feedback and understand their experiences with Microsoft?s products and services using industry-accepted methods (e.g., Moneyball). Acts as a subject matter expert in performing market or user research through AI in collaboration with the User Research team, conducting competitive analyses, and examining market and industry trends, as well as industry-specific requirements or regulations. Shares insights with senior internal/external stakeholders and internal team to ensure cross-team alignment. Leads contract negotiations and partnerships across the organization and company-wide alignment. Assesses acquisition targets to enhance the migration offering. Shares insights with internal team and ensures cross-team alignment on creating products that are easy to adopt and provide a positive experience for customers.

Demonstrates and builds experiences across multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Leads process defining problems and incubating solutions for a team or organization. Understands the broader ecosystem of Microsoft products and where to leverage capabilities and functionalities across the ecosystem. Coaches and mentors internal team to develop problem statements and forms hypotheses of new feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries to address highly complex customer needs and/or market opportunities; identifies dependencies of other feature areas. Uses AI for trend analysis and sentiment evaluation to generate hypotheses, understand problems, and predict customer preferences, leading experiments and A/B tests to improve model performance and inform feature development. Establishes clarity of patterns of root problem and how it relates with previously seen trends across customers, determines the customers/sectors impacted, foresees future opportunities, and uses research evidence to influence feature prioritization. Ensures product-market fit and alignment between the customer, the market, internal stakeholders, senior leadership, and the goals and strategy of Microsoft. Collaborates with others (e.g., Software Engineering [SWE], Hardware Engineering [HWE], Product Marketing, Design, Security Subject Matter Experts) to ensure that they can satisfy customer and security requirements. Validates the market size, explores new opportunities to determine products or features of greatest value, and collaborates with other teams (e.g., Finance) to build the Long Range Plan (LRP). Defines and optimizes AI-driven solution options across multiple feature areas across divisional boundaries (e.g., product, service), incorporating insights into refinement and experimentation processes. Partners with senior colleagues on other teams (e.g., SWE, HWE) in refinement sessions to synthesize hypothesis results into solutions tied with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) progress. Resolves alignment issues, contributes to portfolio level solutions, and drives cross-functional clarity with senior leadership.

Go To Market

Collaborates with Product Marketing, Business Planning, and Engineering to identify product release criteria (including security requirements such as Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) compliance), customer acquisition, usage, retention, and monetization strategies. Helps scale Product Marketing teams by building marketing and roll-out plans and/or content such as product overviews, blogs, and landing pages for individual features or smaller products that ladder up to marketing plans for an overall product solution area. Creates and drives strategy for taking the multiple feature areas across divisional boundaries from private preview to public preview and then to general availability. Begins to orchestrate the creation and/or automation of customer support plans (e.g., frequently asked questions [FAQs], scripts), HyperCase, change management, and communication plans.

Executes on opportunities to evangelize the supported feature areas worked on, including AI-driven solutions, with internal and external stakeholders, partners, analysts, and customers in the industry via presentations, blog posts, social media, and other forums. Presents at Executive Briefing Centers (EBCs) and industry/company events. Acts as a primary interface with Product Marketing to educate on the product and leverages AI to develop content.

Product/Service Definition

Translates complex technical AI concepts into business value, engaging with executives and customers to build consensus and support for AI-first product strategies. Influences and drives engagement with cross-functional internal partnerships, external partners, including early adopting customers, senior leadership, and other key stakeholders to gather input and garner support for product/service vision, strategy, and roadmap for multiple feature areas across divisional boundaries. Provides thought leadership and is sought out to address questions and challenges from group managers and other leaders. Rallies the team around a common vision. Leverages AI-driven workflows to collaborate with cross-functional teams and secure buy-in from senior leadership for product vision and strategy for multiple feature areas across organizational boundaries. Advocates for priorities and resources needed to deliver desired outcomes for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Partners to rally others around shared priorities. Balances listening and sharing of information to obtain alignment.

Serves as an expert in identifying AI-informed, long-term or overall solution-level investment opportunities, evaluating tradeoffs, and prioritizing investments in consultation with cross organizational partners for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Guides others to determine the features or experiences to prioritize in the roadmap that will support achievement of success criteria and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

Owns or partners with others around driving significant business impact across the organization and simulating and tracking success criteria and performance metrics (e.g., Objectives and Key Results [OKRs], Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] such as engagement, usage, acquisition, retention, user love/net promoter score (NPS), revenue, profitability, and in-project features) and provides clarity on the fundamentals (e.g., quality, privacy, security, compliance, accessibility, cost of goods sold [COGS]) of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Sets and defines success metrics for AI related features and products (e.g., precision/recall, relevance scores). Works with internal partner teams (e.g., SWE and HWE) to identify needed data and ensure needed telemetry is developed and obtains it responsibly and compliantly; reports and explicates reasons for outcomes and drives decision making thereafter. Deeply understands the COGS of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries and the KPIs that will help improve profitability. Performs advanced insights analyses (e.g., customer acquisition, customer retention). Identifies OKRs for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries and ensures alignment of the product with organization-level OKRs, including success/performance metrics that represent the security posture of products or features (e.g. percent of information being logged that is required for security investigations). Determines the value of the multiple feature areas to business growth, aligns success criteria, and measures success.

Works across multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across organizational boundaries. Defines or influences the success criteria, long-term vision, and strategy for the feature areas based on a deep understanding of customer needs, market and user research, the competitive landscape, and Microsoft?s business goals and strategy. Writes the product framing memo or strategy documents, including AI-driven solutions, to address unmet or unknown customer needs and scope out opportunities across multiple feature areas and reviews with senior leaders. Distills the vision and strategy into a product roadmap, emphasizing AI as a core differentiator to address customer needs and market opportunities. Creates user stories and epics to convey the big picture. Leverages a deep understanding of the product architecture to design integrated scenarios. Utilizes AI to generate synthetic feedback to simulate user feedback and refine product vision memos, user stories, and scenarios, aiding in testing positioning, messaging, and feature value before launch. Collaborates with others (e.g., Business Planning, Finance, Support, Customers, Product Marketing) to identify the potential customer base. Integrates AI-first thinking into product strategy. Communicates product strategy to internal and external customers and builds consensus through multiple methods (e.g., conference presentations, collaboration with partner organizations).

Product/Service Development

Owns and drives the roadmap for the multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) they own across divisional boundaries. Prioritizes the backlog, works with internal partners (e.g. SWE and HWE) to align on tradeoffs for the multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) they own across divisional boundaries, partners with Product Marketing on the disclosure of the roadmap, and ensures dependencies are identified and accounted for. Takes in new inputs and adapts as necessary. Builds AI-based systems and frameworks to enable the team to scale for a product area. Influences and lands difficult tradeoffs with peers and manages the team through it. Drives direction between customer needs and what is developed on the roadmap so that a series of problems can be addressed over time. Ensures alignment between the roadmap for the multiple features (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries and Objective and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Identifies and drives features that utilize AI and ensure they meet quality, security, and ethical standards.

Leads the definition of the feature set and collaborates with Design teams to connect multiple design factors (e.g., visual design, user experience [UX], application programming interfaces [APIs], hardware design) to desired functionality and support the product vision. Leverages expertise to develop user stories and scenarios that integrate AI outputs and align with user expectations and needs. Guides broader efforts to generate proof-of-concept designs through the use of Generative AI to explore wider design spaces. Proactively advances the development of minimally-viable-products (MVPs), and drives the testing and refinement of product concepts leveraging AI prototyping tools and auto-generated workflows for greater impact. Partners with data science teams to establish advanced model objectives, optimize training data, and evaluate metrics, ensuring strategic alignment with complex and novel product goals. Iterates multiple designs with design partners in other teams. Iterates of multiple designs with design partners in other teams (e.g. Design, SWE and HWE). Leverages preexisting design patterns and technical knowledge to inform current design iterations, and establish a consistent and cohesive design approach. Identifies opportunities for preexisting and current designs within the product area to create additional value and have a wider impact for stakeholders (e.g., Microsoft, external/internal customers). Anticipates and helps resolve interoperability challenges between different components or layers in the technology stack (e.g., UX and API layer differences). Assists in the development of design strategies for related areas. Supports senior-level design reviews (e.g., UX, system designs, data designs) with customers (e.g., regulators, engineers, policy makers, business-decision makers), to determine usability and ensure accessibility criteria and updated designs meet customer goals. Identifies requirements that can proactively mitigate risks, such as advanced threat detection and response mechanisms. Incorporates security factors into design, such as logging posture (e.g., what needs to be logged for security investigations), permissions minimization (e.g., least level of permissions required to use product or feature), and having security enabled by default (e.g., resilient against prevalent threats and vulnerabilities without requiring additional configuration by the end user).

Collaborates with partner team to build golden configurations and leads scenario walkthroughs and thought exercises to identify problems, system friction, and needed contingencies in advance of early customer adoption for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across organizational boundaries. Provides test demonstrations to leadership team around product/service areas. Shares feature previews or roadmap with customers to drive engagement and to gather feedback and customer telemetry in conjunction with others (e.g., Business Development, Sales, End Consumers, User Research). Collaborates with internal partners (e.g., SWE, HWE, and Scientists) to synthesize, prioritize, and address feedback to continuously refine AI-driven product strategies and roadmaps. Ensures that products or features related to security incorporate up-to-date Threat Model design into newest versions and that these products or features are reviewed by the internal Threat Model/Security teams. Leverages data and AI tools to analyze and interpret user behavior or feedback, working with data scientists or engineering to develop and implement AI-driven improvements (e.g., training and fine-tuning models, rules).

Product/Service Performance

Builds trust with a targeted selection of customers across sectors. Orchestrates and automates a line of communication with complex and advanced customers to capture feedback and insights through the product development lifecycle. Ensures the vision is aligned with customer goals. Leads customer communities and customer engagement programs. Responds to real-time customer feedback in online portals, leveraging AI-driven workflows to improve efficiency. Understands and drives improvements in the support process, including both forums and communities. Utilizes customer personas as a framework and AI-based research to understand customers and communicate effectively.

Provides expertise to partners (e.g., Data Science, SWE, HWE, User Research) to collect performance metrics (e.g., key performance indicators [KPIs] such as engagement, usage, acquisition, revenue, and in-project features), monitor model deployment and report on progress (e.g., business reviews), and derive deep insights and drives productive courses of action across teams to improve product/feature development, iteration, AI integration, and implementation. Leverages customer listening systems, telemetry, engagements (e.g., interviews, surveys), etc., to develop insights on product performance and customer needs. Shares insights with internal partners (e.g., SWE and HWE). Leverages technical knowledge on API, infrastructure, and/or AI modeling to form hypotheses to complex technical needs, performs experiments, iterates, and tests to drive improvement/adoption in specific performance metrics that have broad impact on multiple areas. Sets and defines success metrics for AI related features and products (e.g., precision/recall, relevance scores).

Identifies features to deprecate based on AI-driven analytics. Develops, articulates, and presents reasoning and tradeoffs involved in deprecations. Helps drive the deprecation process. Works with Public Relations/Product Marketing on messaging to customers. Communicates change accurately. Drives next steps for customer transition. Identifies means failing to meet business demand.

Qualifications

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development OR equivalent experience.

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.

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).

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Product Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

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

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. (