Principal Product Manager
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 9, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 30, 2026. Microsoft scores B on the Alion truth index.
Overview
The Microsoft 365 Core Performance & Scale team is hiring a Principal Product Manager to help build the intelligent productivity platform and deliver high-performance experiences at global scale. The team works across Microsoft 365 and Copilot to improve latency, scalability, reliability, resource efficiency of operating one of the world’s largest productivity platforms.
This is a broad platform role for a product leader who is comfortable with open-ended, high-impact problems. The work spans performance strategy, strategic efficiency, telemetry and cost optimization, infrastructure demand reduction, benchmarking, platform health, and AI-powered engineering systems. The role will help determine where Microsoft should optimize software, evolve architecture, change operating models, or make platform investments to support continued growth.
Technical and product decisions can have significant customer impact. The right candidate will combine strong product judgment, technical depth, data fluency, customer empathy, and the ability to make clear decisions under uncertainty.
This is an AI-first product management role. You will use agents, automation, AIOps, AI-driven analysis, evaluation systems, and modern prototyping tools to connect telemetry, model tradeoffs, identify opportunities, and accelerate decisions. You will also help move the broader team toward more scalable, AI-forward ways of working.
The role partners closely with engineering leaders, architects, data scientists, finance, service owners, and product teams across Microsoft 365. It carries meaningful visibility and influence and is well suited to a senior product leader who can shape strategy, drive execution across organizational boundaries, mentor other product managers, and raise the quality of product thinking across the team.
This position is based in Redmond, Washington. Employees are expected to work from the office three days per week.
Microsoft’s Mission and Culture
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our employees bring a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize shared goals. 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
Shape the strategy and roadmap for performance, scalability, and strategic efficiency across Microsoft 365 and Copilot, connecting customer experience, platform health, resource consumption, andmore.
Lead high-impact work across latency reduction, infrastructure demand reduction, telemetry efficiency, resource utilization, margin optimization, platform reliability, and scalable service operation.
Bring a strong customer mindset by working with Copilot scenario teams, Microsoft 365 services, developers, service owners, and decision makers to translate customer and business needs into durable platform capabilities and investments.
Use telemetry, benchmarking, experimentation, cost data, and operational signals to understand system behavior, identify performance and efficiency gaps, quantify opportunities, and guide product and engineering decisions.
Build and apply agents, automation, AIOps, agentic loops, and AI-driven analysis to connect data and dashboards, investigate issues, evaluate solutions, coordinate work, and turn manual processes into intelligent, scalable workflows.
Build evaluation sets, prototypes, scenario models, and optimization loops to test approaches and understand technical,customer, and other tradeoffsbefore major investments are made.
Weigh performance, cost, reliability, scalability, resource efficiency, and customer impact to prioritize multi-year platform and engineering investments.
Drive cross-organizational efficiency programs from opportunity identification and business case development through execution, measurement, and sustained impact.
Define success metrics, OKRs, KPIs, scorecards, and operating mechanisms that improve visibility, shape priorities, and hold work accountable to measurable customer and business outcomes.
Translate complex technical and financial findings into clear product narratives, investment recommendations, and decisions for senior leaders.
Partner with engineering leaders, architects, data scientists, finance, service owners, and product teams to align priorities and deliver improvements across organizational boundaries.
Mentor product managers and technical leaders, strengthen product capabilities across the team, and help the organization adopt more effective AI-forward ways of working.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
Bachelor’s Degree and 8+ years of experience in product or service management, program management, software development,
OR equivalent experience.
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and government security screening requirements. These requirements include the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.
Preferred Qualifications
Bachelor’s Degree and 12+ years of experience in product or service management, program management, software development, or equivalent experience.
4+ years of experience taking a product, feature, experience, internal tool, or framework from design through launch and adoption.
6+ years of experience improving product metrics, expanding customer usage, or strengthening customer retention and satisfaction.
Experience shaping differentiated products or platforms and driving meaningful change in an established market or technical environment.
Demonstrated ability to think at the platform and systems level while maintaining a strong customer mindset and translating needs into durable capabilities.
Experience leading ambiguous, high-stakes work from strategy through execution across multiple organizations.
Experience leading performance, efficiency, cost optimization, scalability, or reliability work across large-scale cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, or hyperscale services.
Experience with Microsoft 365, Copilot, LLM platforms, model-serving systems, AI infrastructure, or other large-scale AI-powered products.
Experience developing strategies that balance performance, reliability, scalability, resource utilization, customer experience, and cost.
AI fluency, including experience applying AI agents, automation, prototyping, evaluation systems, or AI-driven analysis to product decisions and operating workflows.
Experience using telemetry, experimentation, benchmarking, cost data, and operational signals to guide product, engineering, or investment decisions.
Experience developing business cases and translating technical efficiency opportunities into measurable financial and customer outcomes.
Experience mentoring and developing product managers or technical leaders.
Strong systems-level problem solving, clear communication, and the ability to influence senior leaders and align stakeholders across organizational boundaries.
Compensation and Equal Opportunity
Product Management IC5. The typical base pay range for this role in the United States is USD $142,800 to $274,800 per year. A different range applies to specific work locations, including the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, where the typical base pay range is USD $188,000 to $304,200 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.
The position will be open for a minimum of five 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, pregnancy, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, please use the Microsoft careers accessibility resources.
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:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
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.