Principal Group Product Manager, Community (Redmond)

Job ID: 200047321Posted: 2026-08-06Location: United States, Washington, RedmondSalary: USD $165,600 - $296,400 per yearEmployment type: Full-TimeWork site: 3 days / week in-officeRole type: People ManagerTravel: Less than 25%Profession: Product ManagementDiscipline: Product ManagementCompany: MicrosoftOverviewThe Scale Customer Value organization in Microsoft Security is looking for a creative, forward-looking product leader to reimagine what community means in the age of AI.This is not a traditional community-management role. It is a product and people leadership role for someone who sees community as a system: a trusted network of practitioners, partners, product teams, content, data, and increasingly AI agents. The leader will build on a substantial existing foundation, including one of the world's largest security practitioner communities, and evolve it from a collection of successful programs into an AI-native platform and operating model that can serve defenders at global scale.The opportunity is to make community a durable competitive advantage for Microsoft Security. That means creating experiences practitioners genuinely value, helping them learn from and strengthen one another, making trusted community knowledge useful to people and AI agents, and connecting what the community learns directly to product decisions.The Principal Group Product Manager leads a multidisciplinary, distributed organization of product managers spanning community strategy, practitioner programs, customer engagement, content and amplification, and community experiences. It partners closely with the engineering team that builds the community platform, as well as product teams, Direct Customer Engagement and Early Adoption, User Experience, Support, Learning, Marketing, Microsoft Security Response Center, and Microsoft's partner organizations.The role is accountable for two outcomes:Practitioner Love: practitioners choose to participate, contribute, recommend, and advocate for Microsoft Security.Product Impact: community insight helps Microsoft Security products become measurably better, faster.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.ResponsibilitiesSet the vision for community in the AI era. Define how practitioners, partners, Microsoft experts, and AI agents learn from one another, then translate that vision into a clear strategy, operating model, and roadmap.Lead community as a product. Own the end-to-end experience across private and public communities, platforms, programs, content, data, and engagement journeys. Apply product discipline: customer discovery, prioritization, experimentation, instrumentation, and continuous improvement.Build a network, not an audience. Grow meaningful practitioner-to-practitioner connection, contribution, advocacy, and belonging. Define and improve Practitioner Love, meaning practitioner loyalty and advocacy, as a measured outcome. Move beyond broadcast, attendance, and membership counts toward observable value and sustained participation.Shape and harness the AI-native community platform. Set community requirements and partner with the engineering organization that builds the platform, customer relationship management system, and agent experiences. Ensure internal teams can engage practitioners safely at scale and trusted community knowledge can be discovered and used in AI-mediated workflows.Scale through self-service and a center of excellence. Free the team from repetitive work by creating reusable tools, standards, automation, and guidance, allowing its expertise to focus on higher-value community building. Enable product and early-adoption teams to run appropriate engagements directly while preserving trust, privacy, quality, and traceability.Turn community signal into product action. Build a visible closed loop from practitioner insight to ownership, decision, product or business action, and response back to the community. Partner across product, engineering, User Experience, Support, and Early Adoption to ensure the voice of practitioners shapes the entire lifecycle, not just the launch.Lead the community portfolio with judgment. Make clear investment and prioritization decisions across practitioner programs, private communities, previews, recognition, learning, public channels, content, and events. Preserve high-value experiences while thoughtfully evolving, scaling, or transitioning work to serve the strategy.Build strategic partnerships across the ecosystem. Create strong working relationships with security product teams, the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft's field and partner organizations, external community leaders, MVPs, researchers, educators, and other practitioner networks.Lead and grow an exceptional team. Provide clarity, coaching, accountability, and care to a geographically distributed organization. Develop strong leaders, build an inclusive culture, and guide the team confidently through transformation and ambiguity.Represent the practitioner voice. Be a trusted internal advocate for defenders and an authentic external presence with the credibility to engage technical communities, senior customers, partners, and Microsoft executives.What success looks like:The Community organization has a clear charter, operating model, and measurable outcomes. Team members understand what they own, how decisions are made, and how their work advances Practitioner Love and Product Impact.Practitioners experience Microsoft Security community as a place that gives more than it asks: a trusted network that helps them become better defenders, connects them to peers and experts, recognizes meaningful contribution, and makes useful knowledge available wherever they work, including through AI.Product and engineering teams can engage the community through safe, repeatable self-service experiences, with Community Product Managers focusing their expertise where it creates the greatest value. Community engagements are traceable, insight is captured consistently, and practitioners can see what happened after they provided feedback.Microsoft can demonstrate:Increased practitioner contribution, advocacy, and sustained engagement.Faster and more consistent outcomes from community feedback.Greater adoption and repeat use of priority community experiences and assets.More product, documentation, support, learning, and business decisions informed by practitioner insight.A meaningful increase in community knowledge that is discoverable, trustworthy, and useful in AI-mediated experiences.The result is not simply a larger community. It is a stronger defender network and a repeatable system that helps Microsoft Security learn and improve at scale.QualificationsRequired Qualifications:Bachelor's Degree AND 10+ years experience in product/service/program management or software developmentOR equivalent experience.3+ years people management experience.Preferred Qualifications: Significant experience leading community, developer relations, customer engagement, product management, ecosystem, or practitioner-facing organizations at global scale.Demonstrated executive communication, storytelling, and influence skills, including the ability to align senior stakeholders and teams that do not report to you.Experience using customer or community insight to influence product, engineering, support, learning, or go-to-market decisions.Experience in product/program management, community leadership, developer relations, business, technology, or a related field.A forward-looking perspective on AI agents, AI-mediated discovery, and how artificial intelligence changes learning, contribution, content, support, and community.Security, cloud, developer, or enterprise-technology experience; security expertise is valuable, but demonstrated ability to learn a complex technical domain quickly is equally important.An inventive, optimistic leadership style and a willingness to challenge inherited assumptions while respecting the people and foundations already in place.Product Management M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $165,600 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 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.