Technical Program Manager, AI Tools

Our Research + Insights team is one of the largest and most innovative market research teams in the world and partners with the company’s core businesses. We are close to and in constant contact with our business partners, and our work has global reach and impact. Our people are research and data science professionals with a consultative approach who thrive on tackling significant business opportunities and influencing decision-makers at all levels.

We are intellectually curious, analytical, impact-driven, persistent, and not shy about sharing our insights and recommendations. We are passionate about developing ourselves, our careers, and our profession, and we take pride in knowing the businesses we support. Above all, we aspire to create an open, inclusive, and transparent culture.

We are seeking a technically fluent, high-agency Technical Program Manager II to join our AI & Data Science Tools team and lead cross-functional execution for Frontier Listening, an AI-powered customer and market intelligence capability. This role will create clarity and momentum across interconnected product, engineering, data science, research, and business workstreams, ensuring that teams operate against shared priorities and that technical investments translate into measurable customer and business outcomes.

You will establish the operating mechanisms that keep a complex, distributed program aligned and moving forward. The chosen candidate is a systems thinker who thrives in ambiguity, identifies gaps before they become blockers, and can move comfortably between technical details, product priorities, customer needs, and executive decision-making.

This is a high-impact, high-visibility role at the intersection of AI innovation, customer intelligence, and product decision-making. You will help shape how Frontier Listening evolves from a collection of powerful capabilities into a cohesive, scalable product and operating system, while influencing decisions across Microsoft’s product, engineering, research, and marketing organizations.

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

Integrated Program Planning: Create and maintain a single, canonical view of Frontier Listening work across full-time and partner teams, including priorities, owners, milestones, dependencies, risks, blockers, and decisions.

End-to-End Program Execution: Translate product strategy into actionable plans, sequence work across multiple technical workstreams, drive commitments, and ensure consistent progress toward measurable outcomes.

Cross-Functional Alignment: Connect product, engineering, data science, research, marketing, and business stakeholders around shared objectives, priorities, assumptions, and measures of success.

Technical Program Leadership: Develop a working understanding of Frontier Listening’s knowledge graph, AI experiences, data pipelines, source integrations, and product surfaces in order to challenge plans, identify technical dependencies, and facilitate informed tradeoffs.

Operating Model and Rhythm of Business: Establish and continuously improve the planning, standup, review, decision-making, and leadership communication cadences required for the program to operate effectively and predictably.

Risk and Dependency Management: Proactively identify ambiguity, delivery risks, cross-team dependencies, and misalignment; bring forward clear options, tradeoffs, and recommendations; and drive issues through resolution.

Distributed Team Integration: Plan, track, and review work across full-time employees and offshore engineering partners as one integrated delivery system, with transparent ownership, accountability, and shared context.

Decision Enablement: Bring together the right technical, product, customer, and business context so leaders and teams can make timely, informed decisions.

Executive Communication: Provide concise, decision-ready updates that clearly communicate what has moved, what is blocked or at risk, what has changed, what happens next, and where leadership input is required.

Customer and Business Outcomes: Partner with product and research leads to ensure that program execution remains connected to customer needs, product adoption, decision quality, and business value, rather than treating delivery milestones as the end outcome.

Continuous Improvement: Use delivery data, stakeholder feedback, retrospectives, and emerging AI capabilities to improve program health, execution quality, and team effectiveness.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Information Systems, Business, or a related field AND 2+ years of experience in engineering, product management, technical program management, data science, analytics, or related experience, OR equivalent experience.
• 1+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

Additional or preferred Qualifications

• Masters Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Information Systems, Business, or a related field AND 6+ years of experience in technical program management, product management, engineering program management, or a related technical discipline.
• Experience supporting AI, machine learning, generative AI, data science, analytics, knowledge graph, or modern data platform products.
• Experience working with software engineers, data engineers, data scientists, researchers, and product managers against a shared roadmap.
• Experience delivering programs involving data ingestion, data quality, model or inference workflows, APIs, agents, knowledge systems, or user-facing product experiences.
• Experience creating portfolio-level roadmaps or a single integrated view across multiple interconnected technical and business workstreams.
• Experience managing work across globally distributed teams, vendors, suppliers, or offshore development partners.
• Experience using Azure DevOps, GitHub, Jira, or similar tools to manage roadmaps, backlogs, dependencies, and delivery health.
• Experience applying Agile, Lean, or iterative product-development practices while adapting process to the needs of the product and team.
• Product judgment and customer-centered thinking, including the ability to connect technical delivery to customer problems, product adoption, learning, and business impact.
• Experience using qualitative research, customer feedback, telemetry, market signals, or other evidence to inform priorities and program decisions.
• Experience defining success measures and using data to evaluate program health, product outcomes, or operational effectiveness.
• Experience facilitating executive reviews, product strategy discussions, planning sessions, or cross-organizational decision forums.
• Ability to translate technical architecture, risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs into plain language for leadership and nontechnical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to create clarity and momentum in ambiguous environments through high ownership, thoughtful urgency, and a bias toward action.
• Ability to build trust quickly, navigate competing priorities, and maintain constructive accountability across organizational boundaries.
• Experience translating strategies or business objectives into actionable program plans, milestones, ownership, dependencies, and measurable outcomes.
• Experience independently managing multiple concurrent workstreams and driving execution in an ambiguous or rapidly evolving environment.
• Experience identifying and mitigating program risks, resolving blockers, and managing cross-team dependencies.
• Experience establishing or improving program operating mechanisms such as roadmaps, backlogs, delivery reviews, decision logs, status reporting, or rhythms of business.
• Demonstrated ability to influence, align, and drive accountability across teams without relying on direct authority.
• Ability to develop a working understanding of complex technical systems and communicate effectively with engineers, data scientists, product leaders, researchers, and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Written and verbal communication skills, including experience synthesizing complex information into clear recommendations and executive-ready updates.
• Demonstrated ownership, initiative, and follow-through, including proactively recognizing gaps, creating structure, and closing loops without extensive direction.

Technical Program Management IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $102,100 - $202,200 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 $133,800 - $219,200 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.