Director of Product Strategy, Commerce

Microsoft • Mountain View, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

Microsoft Commerce is seeking a Director of Product Strategy, Commerce to own the analytical and narrative foundation of its strategy across Consumer, Merchant, Partner, and Payments. The role sets new strategic direction for pillar teams and evaluates the agentic-commerce market, including its protocols, participant incentives, monetization models, and Microsoft’s competitive position. It is an individual-contributor role that serves as a force multiplier to the VP, with influence grounded in rigorous analysis and clear recommendations rather than team size.

The position develops first-principles market and competitive perspectives, designs and tests payer models, sizes opportunities and forecasts financial outcomes, and brings structured decision frameworks to major product and investment choices. It synthesizes cross-portfolio work into a coherent strategy, identifies conflicts early, and turns analysis into executive-ready narratives, strategy papers, and investment cases. The role operates as a peer to senior leaders, forming and defending a point of view while updating it when evidence warrants.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. The company emphasizes a growth mindset, innovation, collaboration, respect, integrity, accountability, and an inclusive culture. AI Experiences employees living within a 50-mile commute of a designated U.S. Microsoft Hub are expected to work from the office at least four days per week, subject to local law and jurisdictional variation.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Business Administration or a related field and 4+ years of relevant experience, or a bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Liberal Arts, Computer Science, or a related field and 6+ years of relevant experience, or equivalent experience.
• Relevant experience may include marketing, strategy, business planning, consulting, banking, finance, economics, or partner organization work.
• Demonstrated ability to reason from first principles about business models, who pays and why, and effective monetization design.
• Ability to build credible market or monetization models from the ground up and defend assumptions.
• Track record of structuring large, ambiguous product or investment decisions.
• Fluency in the economics of retail, marketplaces, and payments.
• Ability to turn dense analysis into a clear, defensible narrative that influences senior stakeholders.
• Excellent communication and executive-influence skills.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in Business Administration or a related field and 8+ years of relevant experience, or a bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Liberal Arts, Computer Science, or a related field and 12+ years of relevant experience, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years in product strategy, corporate strategy, strategy consulting, investing (PE, VC, or banking), or a strategy-heavy product leadership role, with depth in platform or marketplace businesses.
• Direct experience in agentic commerce, digital payments, or commerce platforms, and familiarity with the emerging commerce-protocol landscape.
• Fluency in AI/LLM product economics and how they affect unit costs and monetization.
• Experience shaping investment or funding cases that cleared a senior-level bar.

Responsibilities

• Own a current, first-principles point of view on the agentic-commerce market, protocol landscape, major-player incentives, and Microsoft’s competitive advantage.
• Design and pressure-test monetization models, including payer models across Consumer, Merchant, and Partner, as well as methods and sequencing.
• Build opportunity models and forecasts to rank bets and support investment requests, including ARR- and ROI-based justification.
• Develop repeatable decision frameworks for major product bets and make decision reasoning structured and clear.
• Synthesize Consumer, Merchant, Partner, and Payments work into one coherent strategy and surface conflicts early.
• Develop the strategy narrative, including the MMM narrative, FY strategy papers, and investment cases.
• Prepare the VP with a clear point of view and the key factors that could change it.
• Operate as a peer to senior leaders, forming and defending a point of view and revising it based on evidence.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director