Senior Business Manager - AI Experiences

Overview

About the Team

Microsoft AI Experiences (AIX) builds the end-user AI experience at Microsoft, spanning Copilot, Search, Browser, Content, Commerce, and Monetization. AIX is roughly 7,000 people working from core hubs in Redmond, Mountain View, and New York City, engineering centers across India and China, and established teams in Vancouver, San Francisco, Barcelona, Cairo, and other locations. The organization moves quickly and ships on a fast, high-visibility rhythm.

AIX Ops keeps the organization running so the team can stay focused on building great products. We are a small, fast-moving team that supports each other, operates with integrity and inclusivity, and makes decisions based on evidence rather than opinion. Every day looks a little different, and the work has real and immediate impact on how a 7,000-person organization plans, hires, and spends.

Microsofts 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.

About the Role

We are seeking a strategic and operationally rigorous Senior Business Manager to lead PCN governance, workforce planning, and organizational management for AI Experiences. This role ensures disciplined headcount management, healthy organizational design, reliable hiring execution, and workforce plans that stay aligned to business priorities and financial commitments.

Just as important, this role looks beyond its own scope. The right person spots the operational problems that slow the whole organization down, frames them into projects worth doing, and leads those projects to a result that other teams adopt. If you are entrepreneurial, grounded, and hard-working, you will fit right in.

The ideal candidate combines strong business acumen with exceptional attention to detail and the ability to influence across Finance, HR, Recruiting, and executive leadership. This individual thrives in fast-paced environments, drives complex cross-functional processes, and enables leaders to make informed organizational decisions through data-driven insight.

Responsibilities

PCN Governance and Headcount Management

• Own end-to-end governance of Position Control Numbers (PCNs) across the organization, including creation, allocation, transfer, and closure.

• Review and approve organizational changes that affect PCNs, reporting structures, and workforce allocations.

• Partner with Finance, HR, Recruiting, and Business Management to manage workforce investments and hiring plans against budget commitments.

• Monitor PCN utilization, vacancy rates, hiring velocity, and organizational capacity, and flag risks to leadership early.

• Maintain data accuracy across workforce management systems so that leaders can trust the numbers they are given.

Workforce Planning and Organizational Insight

• Build and maintain the headcount, hiring, attrition, and budget-utilization views that managers use to run their teams.

• Translate workforce data into clear recommendations for leaders, not just reports, so that organizational decisions are grounded in evidence.

• Support planning cycles end to end, from target setting through allocation, reconciliation, and in-year adjustments.

• Design scalable governance frameworks for organizational planning that hold up as the business grows and reorganizes.

Identifying and Leading Organization-Wide Projects

This role is expected to look up from its own scope and improve how AIX operates as a whole. Much of the high-value work in AIX Ops is not assigned; it is noticed. We want someone who sees the recurring friction in how the organization plans, hires, spends, and reports, sizes the opportunity, and then leads the work to fix it.

• Identify operational gaps, redundant processes, and unmet needs across the organization, and turn them into clearly scoped, business-justified project proposals.

• Prioritize candidate projects against organizational impact and operationalize the project to completion.

• Lead cross-functional initiatives end to end with Finance, HR, Recruiting, and Engineering partners, owning the plan, the milestones, and the outcome.

• Influence without authority across teams that do not report to this role, building the coalition needed to move a change through a large, matrixed organization.

• Define success measures up front, track them through delivery, and report results to leadership with the same rigor applied to headcount and budget.

• Drive adoption and handoff so that improvements outlive the project, including documentation, training, and a clear owner for ongoing operation.

• Share what works across AIX Ops and neighboring organizations, scaling solutions.

Process Excellence and Compliance

• Establish governance processes and controls that keep the organization compliant with company policy and budget commitments.

• Ensure compliance with internal controls, audit requirements, and workforce governance policies.

• Drive continuous improvement that simplifies workforce planning and removes manual steps wherever automation or better tooling can carry the load.

• Coordinate cross-functional execution across HR, Finance, Recruiting, Legal, and Operations partners.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelors Degree in relevant field (e.g., Finance, Business Administration, Operations, Human Resources) AND 6+ years experience in financial management, business planning, operations management, strategy, project management, human resources, or business-related roles OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Masters Degree in relevant field (e.g., Finance, Business Administration, Operations, Human Resources) AND 8+ years of experience in business management, workforce planning, finance, HR operations, or organizational management.

• Experience managing headcount planning, workforce investments, or organizational governance programs.

• Experience supporting C-suite executives or senior leadership teams.

• Strong analytical and financial modeling skills, with advanced proficiency in Excel, Power BI, and workforce planning tools.

• Knowledge of corporate workforce planning and position management processes.

• Experience working within large, matrixed organizations, and a proven ability to influence without authority across multiple stakeholder groups.

• Experience leading organizational planning during periods of rapid growth or transformation.

• Track record of building a process, tool, or reporting solution that was adopted beyond the team that created it.

• Demonstrated experience identifying an operational problem independently and leading a cross-functional project from proposal through adoption.

Business Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $116,900 - $203,600 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 $148,400 - $222,600 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.