The Office of the CTO (OCTO) for Microsoft is chartered with understanding, shaping, and accelerating technologies and their impact across Microsoft, industry, and society. OCTO leads investments in emerging technical bets, provides technical insights, and drives high-priority company-wide Artificial Intelligence (AI) initiatives, while partnering with our engineering, field, and strategy teams. As part of this, OCTO is responsible for Microsoft’s technical strategy for the use of OpenAI technology across Microsoft. OCTO operates as a high‑leverage organization – partnering deeply across engineering, product, research, and leadership to influence technical direction, execution integrity, and long‑term strategy.

We are seeking a Senior Principal Technical Program Manager to operate as a companylevel technical and execution leader, driving outcomes across multiple organizations and influencing Microsoft’s most critical AI and platform priorities. This role is reserved for leaders who routinely operate at the executive and architectural boundary, shape ambiguous problem spaces before they become programs, and establish durable mechanisms that scale well beyond their direct scope.

As a Senior Principal Technical Program Managerin OCTO, you will set direction as much as you drive delivery—defining the “what” and “why,” not just the “how.” You will partner closely with senior engineering leaders, researchers, and executives to frame complex, multiyear initiatives, resolve systemic execution and dependency challenges, and ensure Microsoft’s most strategic technical bets are delivered with coherence, rigor, and responsibility.

At Microsoft, our mission—to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more—guides how we partner with customers to deliver trusted, impactful solutions. With a growth mindset culture, we innovate responsibly and measure success by shared progress—people, teams, and customers. Join us to do meaningful work that changes the world and helps shape what’s next for everyone.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree AND 15+ years experience engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
• 1+ year(s) of experience reading and/or writing code (e.g., sample documentation, product demos).
• Track record of developing and launching successful AI products.
• Foundation in AI technical skills, such as understanding Machine Learning (ML)/Reinforcement Learning (RL), AI models, building AI services or products, as well as AI infrastructure, compute, hardware, and optimization.
• Possess analytical acumen, vigilant adaptability, and critical architect design for assessing AI infrastructure, hardware, compute capability, services and tooling to enable acceleration of our bold AI ambitions.
• Demonstrated history of engineering and product expertise with experience building AI services or products for customers and launching them to solve high value problems.
• Ability to handle high ambiguity, drive clarity, and identify/prioritize issues and opportunities among a wide variety of Stakeholders.
• Ability to communicate thoughts both verbally and in written form at the appropriate level of abstraction in a clear/crisp manner to Senior Leaders, including ability to escalate appropriately where needed.
• Be able to lead through influence, work across teams at scale, and feel confident engaging with Executives
• Ability to earn a high level of trust by working collaboratively and helping others be successful. Our success is the success of partners and collaborators.