Microsoft Frontier Company partners with enterprise customers to turn their AI investment into measurable business outcomes. We embed Microsoft’s engineering, applied science, and AI professionals directly inside our customers’ organizations to co-design, deploy, and continuously improve AI systems at enterprise scale, working alongside customer teams to take solutions from idea to production.
Within Frontier Company, the Research, Science & Strategy (RSS) team is where applied science is the differentiator. We take our most ambitious, ambiguous customer problems and turn them into novel AI solutions, pairing rigorous science with production engineering to ship capability that moves the numbers that matter to the business.
This is a deeply customer-facing role. As a Senior Technical Program Manager on the RSS team, you are the day-to-day face of Microsoft to the customer and the owner of the “what, how, and when” of delivery. You’ll be in the room with the customer’s technical and business leaders every week, building trust, framing the problem, guiding technical direction alongside engineering and applied science partners, and making sure we ship solutions with real, measurable impact.
Why this role is different
A rare, genuinely well-rounded program management role. Most PM jobs specialize in a single dimension. This one deliberately blends all of them: the customer relationship and communication of a customer-facing PM, the hands-on technical judgment of a technical PM, and the planning, governance, and execution leadership of a program manager. If you’ve been looking for a seat that spans customer, technical, and delivery leadership at once (and rarely find all three in one title), this is that role.
Responsibilities
- Own the customer relationship and delivery end-to-end. Serve as the day-to-day customer owner and product owner for the engagement. Deeply understand the customer’s business need, translate it into clear problem statements and success criteria, and lead delivery across multiple parallel workstreams and use cases, balancing speed, rigor, and operational readiness.
Run the engagement as product owner. Shape epics and user stories, prioritize the backlog, define validation criteria, and guide sprint planning and execution so the team reliably ships increments of working capability.
Provide hands-on, architecture-aware technical leadership. Partner with engineering and applied science leads to converge on technical approaches; review designs for feasibility and integration risk; and drive decisions on build vs. reuse, experimentation vs. hardening, and performance vs. cost. Ensure the right evaluation signals exist (telemetry, quality metrics, end-to-end validation) so teams iterate fast while holding a clear bar for production.
Drive customer alignment and communication. Lead workshops and working sessions to clarify requirements, constraints, and dependencies. Communicate tradeoffs and decisions with credibility, manage expectations with crisp outcome-based updates, and act as the first line of escalation, unblocking teams and keeping execution on track.
Own governance, risk, and release readiness. Run RAID and dependency management across teams, anticipate delivery and operational risks early, and apply change control where needed. Ensure delivery meets expectations for quality, compliance, privacy, security, safety, and accessibility. Drive release readiness end-to-end: staging plans, validation gates, operational readiness checks, go-live coordination, and post-release follow-ups.
Scale impact. Turn learnings into repeatable delivery patterns and reusable assets, and drive adoption across engagements to raise consistency, velocity, and quality over time.
What success looks like (first 6-12 months)
You drive the delivery of novel AI solutions that create clear business impact for customers. You consistently translate ambiguous customer needs into a prioritized backlog and executable plan that ships working outcomes. You run multiple workstreams in parallel with strong technical judgment, predictable delivery mechanics, and clear stakeholder transparency. You raise quality through measurable validation criteria, robust release readiness, and reusable delivery patterns that scale across engagements.
Qualifications
Required/Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree AND 4+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development
- OR equivalent experience.
- 2+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
- Machine learning and AI experience. Hands-on experience building, integrating, or evaluating models or AI services (e.g., prototypes, GenAI/LLM applications, retrieval-augmented or agentic systems, evaluation signals, operational readiness), sufficient to lead technical direction and tradeoffs credibly.
- Engineering experience. A hands-on background building, designing, and coding software, sufficient to engage engineers as a technical partner on architecture, design, and feasibility.
- Excellent customer-facing communication, building trust with technical and business stakeholders and translating fluidly between them.
Additional or Preferred Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience 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.
- 1+ year(s) of experience reading and/or writing code (e.g., sample documentation, product demos).
- Advanced degree in a technical or quantitative field.
- Experience delivering AI/ML solutions into production or enterprise environments, including operational readiness and iterative improvement cycles, especially in an embedded or consulting delivery model.
- Familiarity with the modern AI stack: LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic frameworks, evaluation tooling, and Azure AI/ML.
- Experience coordinating governance and release readiness for customer-facing technical solutions.
Technical Program Management IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $160,200 - $261,000 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.
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