Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the heart of Digital Transformation, sweeping through every business and every industry on the planet. At Microsoft AI, our mission is “Amplifying human ingenuity with intelligent technology” and we are doing so by building the most innovative AI Platform services to help businesses digitally transform, by integrating cognitive services to their high value use cases to achieve more through the power of AI.

The Azure AI Strategy & Commercialization team within the AI platform organization works on the Azure AI growth strategy, engages the largest customers and partners in the world to co-innovate, incubate, and improve our core AI platform from scenarios utilizing Azure platform Services, and develop new scenarios and product categories.  We do so by building and infusing AI technologies in real world solutions and extending the signals from real world patterns to build robust, scalable AI platform services and products.

We are looking for the best and brightest talent to join our group and help us lead the next generation of Azure AI Service solutions.  As a principal Program Manager, focused on strategy and customer advocacy, you will play a central role in helping define that strategy, engage with customers to help them define their AI strategy, evangelize our AI technologies, and develop product themes/scenarios that inform the strategy, product, and GTM.  This will require analyzing and understanding customer needs and habits conducting competitive analysis, partnering with various teams across Microsoft to develop the thesis for the strategy/GTM, and to participate actively in Customer Exec Briefings and outreach.

Responsibilities

Develop a holistic business and GTM strategy for Azure AI in partnership with various stakeholders across Microsoft

Engage deeply with key customers to understand their use cases and position Azure AI Solutions to meet their needs

Glean strategic insights from customer learnings and develop recommendations to shape product roadmap and GTM

Develop long-range AI strategies and identify key dependencies by key services

Serve as an Azure AI service evangelist, presenting current and future service offerings to customers, partners, and analysts.

Partner with product teams to align use case scenarios with appropriate products

Communicate and work with a wide set of stakeholders; from the data scientist building the models to the business decision makers

Participate in business model development and product pricing and positioning strategies

Share actionable insight, learnings, feedback to drive continuous improvement.

Drive mindshare working with PR and product marketing team.

Partner with key stakeholders across the company to drive scale of solutions and platform offerings

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

5+ years of proven track record as a Principal Program Manager (or equivalent level) working with customers and partners, with focus on AI strategy and GTM

2+ years of proven track with cloud services, on-prem software, enterprise AI, and scaling usage / consumption of product and services.

A minimum of a bachelor’s degree in computer science, or a related field, or equivalent alternative education, skills, and/or practical IT work experience is required.

Preferred Qualifications:

We are looking for a passionate, highly motivated, and innovative Principal Program Manager to help us growth our Azure AI business with differentiated strategies and GTM

The ideal candidate is self-motivated to drive the creation of business strategies and GTM for AI products and services, who has a proven track record in enterprise business and product roles, and who can collaborate and partner within a deep engineering and product org, and across sales and marketing stakeholders, and deal with ambiguity and complexity

Strong customer focus and a deep commitment to delivering quality products that create customer value and delightful experiences through deeper understanding of customer needs

2+ years of practical experience in AI/ML techniques & tools, as evidenced by prior projects.

Enterprise customer and partner engagement skills – we are working with customers and partners to integrate our technology as part of the digital transformation and this requires deep customer interfacing skills to capture requirements and translate them into product plans, user journeys, and end-to-end scenarios across different personas and device formats in a digital and physical channel.

A deep commitment to excellence in what they do with a very high bar for quality and accountability for results, operating in a fast-paced, and oftentimes ambiguous environment.

Excellent attention to detail, planning, organization, and project management skills

Effective communication skills with a broad range of audiences and ability to influence without authority.

Outstanding problem solving and conflict-resolution skills across a set of technical, product, and business challenges.

Experience with Azure AI (Cognitive Services and Azure ML) is preferred.

Self-motivated, self-starter with hands-on ability to work without the structure of a large PM team – you need to be ready to roll up your sleeves and do what it takes for the success of the team.

Experience in enterprise solutions and a deep technological understanding of software, hardware, and other devices.

#AIPLATFORMS#

Cloud Background Screening Requirement:

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.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.