Principal Technical Program Manager

Overview

Cloud Operations + Innovation (CO+I) is the organization behind one of the worlds largest cloud infrastructures, responsible for developing, building, and maintaining the entire Microsoft Cloud, including the infrastructure that powers Microsofts AI services. Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide.

Within CO+I, the Analytics & Data Solutions (ADS) team in the Infrastructure Planning & Execution (IPE) organization enables data-driven infrastructure delivery through trusted analytics, intelligent automation, and AI-powered decision support, helping CO+I deliver predictable, scalable datacenter capacity across the globe. As demand for capacity grows and complexity increases, we equip planning and execution teams with the clarity, foresight, and tools they need for both near-term delivery and long-term strategic growth.

We own a critical reporting portfolio that underpins planning, execution, and leadership decision-making across IPE and CO+I and supports key OKRs such as MW capacity delivery, milestone predictability, cycle time, and GPU on-time delivery. We prepare executive-ready content for senior leadership forums and build advanced analytics models and decision-support tools that move the organization from descriptive insights to predictive and prescriptive action. All of this rests on curated, trusted datasets that form the backbone of capacity planning and execution analytics.

We are looking for a Principal Technical Program Manager to be the connection point between the business, our analytics teams, and partner engineering teams. You will own the analytics roadmap, translate complex business needs into scalable data and analytics solutions, and act as a trusted advisor to CO+I leadership. If you combine deep technical expertise in data, a track record of delivering with engineering teams, and the ability to influence at the executive level, this role is for you.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive the ADS analytics roadmap, partnering with IPE leadership, Regional End-to-End Delivery, and AI Delivery to translate business priorities into a prioritized, multi-year plan for reports, dashboards, data products, and analytical models.

• Serve as the primary business point of contact for engineering partners, translating process and workflow requirements into technical specifications, data contracts, and enterprise-grade solutions that scale with CO+I capacity growth.

• Build strategic partnerships across engineering, analytics, and business groups, using a deep understanding of business needs and resources to define and recommend data requirements.

• Lead end-to-end program execution across the business intelligence and data science sub-teams and partner data and software engineering teams, owning scope, schedules, dependencies, risks, and release plans.

• Partner with data architecture to shape the teams data strategy, including canonical data models, source-of-truth definitions, and data quality standards for planning and execution data.

• Apply and share deep expertise in the business data model, ensuring design specifications account for scalability in how data flows and is stored.

• Establish and run intake, prioritization, and deployment processes for analytics requests and BI releases, with clear primary and secondary ownership to eliminate single points of failure.

• Lead executive communications, preparing business review and leadership content that turns complex analyses into clear, actionable narratives.

• Deliver rapid, hands-on ad-hoc analysis for CO+I leadership, collaborating with cross-functional teams to provide timely insights.

• Lead project-level root cause analysis of detected problems and anomalies, determine why alerts occur, and implement solutions that prevent recurring, cost-sensitive points of failure.

• Identify opportunities to apply automation and AI to analytics and reporting workflows, enabling the team to scale impact without scaling headcount.

• Own cross-org user experience testing and feedback loops, driving engineering engagement to ensure solutions meet business requirements.

• Define and track OKRs and KPIs for the analytics portfolio, including adoption, usage, data quality, and business impact.

• Standardize and operationalize best practices across the global portfolio while accounting for regional differences in execution.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors Degree AND 8+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

Other Requirements:

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.
• Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of U.S. citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local government agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidates citizenship will be verified via a valid passport.

Preferred Qualifications:

Technical depth

• 3+ years of hands-on coding experience in Python, C#, or a similar language, building data pipelines, automation, or analytical prototypes, with the ability to read and review code alongside data and software engineering partners.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with Structured Query Language (SQL), including complex joins, window functions, and performance tuning on large-scale datasets.
• Strong knowledge of data modeling, including dimensional modeling (star and snowflake schemas), normalized models, and slowly changing dimensions.
• Strong knowledge of data warehousing and lakehouse concepts, including ETL/ELT design, data lineage, data quality, and data governance.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure, particularly datacenter capacity planning, delivery, or operations.

Engineering partnership and roadmap delivery

• Demonstrated track record of partnering closely with software and data engineering teams to take data platforms or analytics products from requirements to production, including authoring specifications, defining data contracts, participating in design reviews, and managing engineering backlogs.
• Experience building and executing analytical roadmaps that balance strategic investments, technical debt, and urgent leadership requests.
• Experience establishing intake, prioritization, and release governance for analytics solutions.

Leadership and communication

• Strong executive communication and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate clearly at every level of the organization.
• Proven ability to influence without authority, manage multiple stakeholders and workstreams, and push back when needed.
• Experience driving accountability across time zones and geographies in a highly matrixed environment.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and adept at using data to influence decisions.
• Skilled at translating processes and workflows into clear technical and business requirements.

#COICareers | #EPCCareers | #DCDCareers

Technical Program Management IC6 - 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:

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.