Senior Director, Engineering Leader

Overview At Innovation & Technology Programs (ITP), we build and continually reinvent the technology behind Microsoft's Customer Service & Support (CSS) and Customer Success Unit (CSU) businesses. We sit inside the Office of the CTO (OCTO), part of MCAPS-Core, where product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners come together around one goal: accelerating customer outcomes and business growth. OCTO shapes where Microsoft invests in emerging technology, sets technical direction, and leads the company's highest-priority AI initiatives, with impact reaching across Microsoft, industry, and society. Engineering carries that mission into the technology behind customer support and success, working alongside ITP's strategy, delivery, and productivity teams, and organized around three pillars of its own: Innovation, Production, and a shared Tech Ops function that keeps every squad running. Joining ITP means turning new ideas into production-ready solutions and running technology on a real scale, so customers get to value faster. We are seeking a Senior Director of Engineering to lead the engineering platforms behind CSS and CSU. This leader will own the end-to-end engineering strategy, organizational health, customer experience, and business outcomes. In this role, you will lead a multidisciplinary, globally distributed engineering organization. You will define the multi-year technical strategy, direct major engineering and workforce investments, and deliver secure, reliable, responsible experiences on a global scale. You will also make AI transformation central to how we work, modeling AI-first practices and driving AI adoption across engineering, ITP, and the businesses we serve. The successful candidate will be an experienced people manager and leader of leaders who combines executive-level organizational leadership with credible technical depth. You will remain engaged in the most consequential architecture, design, modernization, reliability, security, and live-site decisions while delivering through managers and senior technical leaders. You will create clarity across complex organizational boundaries and partner with engineering, product, design, research, marketing, sales, customer success, and other Microsoft organizations to deliver end-to-end customer and business impact. 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

• Define and communicate the engineering vision, aligning technical and AI investments with customer needs, market opportunities, and Microsoft's broader strategy.
• Drive AI adoption and transformation within engineering and more broadly across ITP, CSS, CSU, and MCAPS, modeling AI-first ways of working and scaling the AI tools, agents, and practices that change how teams work and serve customers.
• Own a clearly defined portfolio and establish measurable objectives for customer value, business performance, service health, engineering effectiveness, and organizational capability.
• Allocate Innovation ("spike") and production engineering squads, plus a shared Tech Ops function, across ITP's delivery, strategy, and disruption priorities so each gets the engineering capacity its stage of work needs.
• Lead, coach, and grow an organization of engineering managers, architects, and engineers, establishing clear accountability while empowering leaders to make effective decisions.
• Translate long-term business and technical strategies into roadmaps, milestones, resource plans, and measurable customer and business outcomes.
• Guide architecture and engineering investments.
• Partner closely with OCTO and ITP's Partner Architects to uphold acceptance standards for partner-built engineering and AI systems, keeping the engineering portfolio coherent across every planning horizon.
• Remain directly engaged in critical architecture and design reviews, major technical tradeoffs, security and privacy decisions, and the response to the most consequential live-site incidents.
• Drive engineering excellence across design, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, incident response, and ongoing service operations.
• Champion security, privacy, accessibility, responsible AI, compliance, reliability, performance, and quality throughout the product lifecycle.
• Build strong partnerships with customers and partners, incorporating their needs and feedback into product strategy and engineering priorities.
• Make portfolio and investment decisions, manage technical and operational risks, and balance near-term delivery with long-term platform health and innovation.
• Partner across organizational boundaries to resolve complex dependencies and deliver integrated experiences that reflect a One Microsoft approach.
• Communicate strategy, progress, risks, and decisions clearly to senior executives, customers, partners, and the broader organization.
• Attract, retain, and develop diverse leadership and engineering talent while strengthening succession plans and organizational capability.
• Own workforce strategy, leadership succession, organizational design, capacity planning, and budget or investment allocation for the engineering portfolio.
• Foster an inclusive culture grounded in customer obsession, growth mindset, accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Model Microsoft's leadership principles by creating clarity, generating energy, and delivering success.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.

Other requirement

• Microsoft is unable to sponsor a work visa for this role due to the nature of the role’s job duties.
• 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

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
• 4+ years people management experience, including leading engineering managers and delivering results through multiple teams.
• Demonstrated experience as a leader of leaders, including setting expectations for senior managers, developing leadership capability, managing performance, and maintaining succession plans for business-critical roles.
• Experience defining and executing product and technical strategy for a complex, business-critical portfolio.
• Demonstrated success delivering secure, reliable, high-quality products or services at significant scale.
• Experience leading engineering teams in AI-first development practices, such as AI-assisted coding, agentic workflows, and AI-driven testing, code review, and operations.
• Demonstrated ability to lead organizational AI transformation while maintaining delivery commitments and service health.
• Experience making engineering investment decisions, managing organizational and technical risk, and operating effectively in ambiguous environments.
• Demonstrated ability to embrace change, push boundaries, and continuously improve how teams work and operate.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders and align stakeholders across organizational and functional boundaries.
• Proficient Executive-level written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience leading a globally distributed engineering organization and developing senior engineering leaders.
• Experience managing a portfolio spanning multiple products, platforms, services, or technical disciplines.
• Prior engineering leader or equivalent experience with direct accountability for a significant engineering portfolio, organizational operating model, investment decisions, and measurable customer or business outcomes.
• Experience applying AI and automation to improve customer experiences, engineering productivity, and operational performance.
• Familiarity with the Microsoft engineering toolchain and services, such as Azure, GitHub and GitHub Copilot, Azure DevOps, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform.
• Experience partnering directly with enterprise customers, strategic partners, regulators, or external industry leaders.
• Proficient Business judgment, including experience with portfolio planning, workforce planning, budgeting, and prioritization.
• Track record of building inclusive, accountable, and high-performing organizations.

Software Engineering M5 - 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.