Director, Business Program Management

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

About The Position

The Director of Business Program Management leads strategic, cross‑functional initiatives that drive operational excellence, internal and partner incentives readiness, and incentive performance across the organization. This role oversees the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of incentive programs and capabilities that enable scale, clarity, and measurable business value of commercial incentives. The Director partners closely with senior leadership, engineering, finance, operations, marketing, and field roles to ensure end‑to-end alignment across strategy, process, tooling, reporting and execution. You will be accountable for defining platform execution strategy, leading complex change management efforts, enabling data‑driven decision‑making, and establishing models that ensure accuracy, compliance, and global consistency. This role also is accountable for the incentives go to market strategy, defining and executing communication & change management plans to land the incentives story within our partner ecosystem and internal partner facing roles. This also includes crafting the assets and defining the policies for the programs.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 8+ years experience in program management, process management, or process improvement OR equivalent experience.
6+ years management (e.g., people, project, process, vendor, change) experience.

Nice To Haves

Master's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 12+ years experience program management, process management, or process improvement OR Bachelor's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 15+ years experience in program management , process management, or process improvement OR equivalent experience.
8+ years people management experience.
Demonstrated success leading cross‑functional, large‑scale programs with executive visibility.
Proven analytical background, including experience with business insights, data modeling, and metrics‑driven decision‑making.
Proven ability to manage complex stakeholder ecosystems across engineering, GTM, operations, and finance.
People leadership experience managing high‑performing teams.
Experience with partner ecosystem programs, incentives, pricing models, or cloud commerce solutions.
Familiarity with large‑scale data systems, reporting platforms, and operational tooling.
Ability to communicate complex concepts clearly to executive audiences.

Responsibilities

Analytics Leadership
Oversee analysis that produce actionable insights for decision‑makers across engineering, finance, field, and leadership across the incentive lifecycle with proven statistical methods.
Define and ensure integrity and consistency of ROI (Return on Investment) measurement methodologies.
Ensure accuracy and integrity of source data for new patterns. Understand data lineage and drive governance processes to solve launch & in-market data related issues.
Internal Reporting, Tools & Services
Drive internal reporting strategy & roadmap, defining a consistent experience for internal audiences, to drive actionable insights. Ensure uptime, accuracy and integrity of internal reports.
Define and manage portfolio of tools and services that support the agile execution of incentives, while driving execution consistency cross Solution Area and alignment to platform roadmap. Drive optimization of resourcing via consolidation, standardization and use of AI.
Strategic Platform Leadership
Lead the strategy & design of the incentive platform execution capabilities. Define & drive roadmap to accelerate time to market, optimizing between engineering owned and GPS owned services and capabilities to balance agility and resource constraints.
Serve as a bridge between business strategy & execution implementation via engineering, ensuring that platform development investments fit into the broader long term platform strategy
Ensure viability of requirements (capabilities, patterns) by providing deep technical expertise on internal data & systems.
Incentive Readiness & Change Management
Design & drive partner and field communication plans to land incentives narrative. Build policy assets and others that clearly articulate incentive value prop and function.
Oversee policy exceptions using a consistent, compliance framework.
Manage critical in-market issues, partnering with execution teams for resolution and communicating with executive audiences.
Team Leadership
Build, develop, and mentor a diverse, high‑performing team specializing in analytics, business operations, process improvement, and program management.
Foster a culture of operational rigor, customer obsession, and continuous improvement.
Set clear expectations, provide coaching, and create opportunities for career growth.