Customer Service & Support AI Planning Lead

Microsoft•,

6d•$130,900 - $303,600•Remote

About The Position

Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) Core accelerates customer outcomes and business growth. By uniting product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners around a common customer mission, we help customers realize value faster and turn innovation into measurable business impact. Through deep technical expertise and differentiated go-to-market execution, we win competitively, capture market share, and scale repeatable growth motions. We differentiate through value creation - delivering world-class, AI-powered customer experiences that accelerate adoption, strengthen loyalty, and create sustainable competitive advantage, driving growth that outpaces the market. Within MCAPS Core, the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization builds trust and confidence for every person and organization through delivering a seamless support experience. In CSS, we are powered by Microsoft’s AI technology to help consumers, businesses and partners resolve their issues quickly and securely, helping prevent future problems from occurring and achieving more from their Microsoft investment. Strategy & Operations (S&O) serves as a cross-business unit within CSS, enabling strategic planning, governance, business performance, operational execution, and transformation across the organization. By aligning priorities, investments, AI and technology initiatives, and execution, we help CSS achieve its business objectives and deliver greater customer impact. The Customer Service & Support (CSS) AI Planning Lead is part of the CSS S&O Planning team and leads a cross-organizational planning motion that integrates AI priorities, investments, capacity impacts, and business outcomes into the CSS Plan of Record. This role is responsible for driving the planning, governance, and execution framework that enables CSS to advance its AI transformation ambitions while delivering against financial Tech Efficiency commitments. The role will partner across CSS Support Business Units (SBUs), Workforce Management & Planning (WMP), Finance, MCAPS Core, CSS Insights, and senior stakeholders to ensure AI investments are prioritized, measurable, and translated into capacity, productivity, and financial outcomes. The successful candidate will create clarity from complexity by establishing and maintaining a centralized AI planning ecosystem that connects AI opportunities, investment decisions, workforce impacts, business outcomes, and executive governance. They will provide leadership with a trusted view of AI progress, attainment to plan, emerging risks, dependencies, and investment performance while driving alignment across a highly matrixed organization. Microsoft’s 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.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, Operations, Engineering, Data Science, or related field AND 8+ years of experience in Business Program Management, Operations, Planning, Finance, Workforce Planning, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Master's Degree in Business, Finance, Operations, Engineering, Data Science, or related field AND 10+ years of experience in Business Program Management, Operations, Planning, Finance, Workforce Planning, or equivalent experience, including experience leading complex cross-functional programs, developing executive recommendations, and influencing senior stakeholders in a matrixed environment.
OR Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, Operations, Engineering, Data Science, or related field AND 12+ years of experience in Business Program Management, Operations, Planning, Finance, Workforce Planning, or equivalent experience, including experience leading complex cross-functional programs, developing executive recommendations, and influencing senior stakeholders in a matrixed environment.
Experience driving large-scale cross-functional programs across highly matrixed support organizations.
Experience partnering with Finance and planning organizations on investment, forecasting, budgeting, or capacity planning processes for support.
Experience with AI transformation, AI operations, AI governance, or AI investment planning.
Expertise in executive storytelling and business review development.
Knowledge of support impact metrics and planning & insights tools such as Anaplan, Power BI, and enterprise portfolio management systems.

Responsibilities

Lead the evolution of the CSS AI Planning operating model and partner with the S&O Strategy + Design team to define and maintain the AI governance framework, including decision rights and escalation paths.
Establish and maintain the centralized CSS AI Plan of Record across all CSS SBUs, including priorities, investments, assumptions, dependencies, expected outcomes, capacity impacts, and financial impacts.
Define planning standards and business rules, and drive alignment on impact metrics, reporting, and resources to ensure consistent application across CSS organizations.
Ensure AI opportunities, investments, and expected outcomes are accurately represented within planning systems and executive reviews.
Drive annual, quarterly, and monthly AI planning motions aligned to CSS strategic priorities.
Partner with Finance and WMP leaders to translate AI investments into measurable financial and capacity impacts.
Ensure AI-driven Tech Efficiency opportunities are incorporated into the WMP capacity planning process and reflected in planning assumptions.
Create end-to-end visibility from AI investment through operational and financial benefit realization.
Develop and improve planning methodologies, assumptions, and controls to increase AI forecast accuracy, strengthen attainment tracking, and enable timely course correction when performance differs from plan.
Lead planning engagement across CSS business units to understand AI priorities, dependencies, risks, and investment needs.
Lead a transparent prioritization process that assesses AI opportunities by impact, investment, capacity, dependencies, readiness, and risk, and recommends tradeoffs and sequencing to senior stakeholders.
Establish governance processes to monitor AI initiative health, readiness, dependencies, and delivery progress in partnership with the S&O Strategy + Design team.
Facilitate resolution of planning conflicts and competing priorities across organizations.
Develop executive narratives, scorecards, dashboards, and business reviews for CSS leadership.
Tell the CSS AI story through the plans in place today while planning for the trends and needs of tomorrow.
Translate complex planning, financial, and technical information into clear executive insights and recommendations.
Ensure leaders have visibility into progress against commitments, investment performance, and business impact.
Partner with CSS Insights and measurement teams to define standardized AI success and impact metrics.
Establish reporting frameworks that connect AI investments to business outcomes, productivity improvements, and financial benefits.
Drive consistency in AI measurement methodologies across CSS.
Identify trends, gaps, and opportunities through analysis, translating findings into recommendations and action plans for business and executive stakeholders.
Partner with S&O and partner teams to identify and drive technical enables to scale AI capabilities.
Proactively identify risks, blockers, dependencies, and execution gaps that may impact AI commitments.
Lead mitigation planning and resolution efforts across stakeholder groups.
Escalate systemic issues to leadership with clear recommendations and tradeoff analysis.
Ensure risks are visible, actionable, and incorporated into executive governance processes.
Embody our culture and values.