Director, Strategic Customer Engagement & Enterprise Initiatives

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

23h•$130,900 - $303,600

About The Position

The Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. We drive cross-company alignment and execution, ensuring that we consistently exceed customers’ expectations in every interaction, whether in-product, digital, or human-centered. CE&S is responsible for all up services across the company, including consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft’s portfolio of solutions and products. The Director, Strategic Customer Engagement & Enterprise Initiatives is a senior individual contributor role within the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization, reporting to the Strategy & Operations Leader for CSS. This role operates as a trusted extension of the CSS LT, leading across two critical dimensions: Customer Impact: Owning the most complex, high-visibility customer engagements and escalations on behalf of the CVP, ensuring coordinated, high-quality resolution and long-term relationship strength. Enterprise Initiatives: Identifying, incubating, and driving high-impact, often confidential strategic projects that fall outside existing ownership models, shaping how CSS evolves its operating model, customer experience, and internal effectiveness. This role is designed for a senior leader who thrives in ambiguity, operates with high trust and discretion, and can move seamlessly between executive engagement, cross-functional mobilization, and hands-on problem solving to deliver measurable business impact. 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

Master's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 6+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR Bachelor's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 8+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR 11+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Master's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 10+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR Bachelor's Degree in technology, business, operations, engineering or related field AND 13+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR 16+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR equivalent experience.
Project management experience.
Experience working with Microsoft products and services.
Cloud Technology Certification (Azure Fundamentals. M365 Fundamentals).
10+ years of experience in customer engagement, program leadership, or enterprise roles
Proven experience managing complex customer relationships and high-severity escalations
Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives in ambiguous, fast-paced environments
Enterprise Thinking: Sees patterns, dependencies, and second-order impacts across systems
Judgment & Discretion: Operates with high trust in sensitive and confidential environments
Bias for Action: Moves quickly with imperfect information, prioritizing learning and outcomes
Influence Without Authority: Drives alignment and execution across boundaries
Clarity & Narrative: Translates complexity into actionable, decision-ready insights

Responsibilities

Manage the most complex, high-priority customer engagements and relationship-level escalations directed to the CSS CVP, driving coordinated resolution across field, engineering, and support teams.
Serve as a senior designee for the CVP across strategic customer accounts, ensuring consistent executive engagement, clear communication, and strong follow-through.
Lead end-to-end preparation and execution for executive customer engagements, including travel, briefings, stakeholder alignment, and post-engagement actions.
Drive continual improvement in escalation management, triage, and engagement models to increase speed, clarity, and customer impact.
Proactively identify systemic gaps, high-leverage opportunities, and cross-functional friction points impacting customer experience, operational efficiency, or organizational effectiveness.
Gather signals from customer interactions, leadership insights, data trends, and frontline feedback to surface unowned or underdeveloped opportunities.
Frame opportunities in terms of enterprise value and long-term impact rather than local optimization.
Design and lead rapid experiments, pilots, and proofs of concept across people, process, operating model, or customer experience domains.
Build and test “minimum viable solutions” to validate hypotheses and accelerate learning.
Operate with agility outside standard governance where appropriate, while maintaining strong judgment, risk awareness, and leadership alignment.
Mobilize and lead small, high-impact, cross-disciplinary teams without direct authority to drive outcomes in ambiguous or high-stakes environments.
Broker alignment across Engineering, Sales, Finance, HR, and Operations to unblock progress and enable execution.
Act as connective tissue across organizational boundaries, resolving issues before formal escalation is required.
Prepare CVP and senior leaders with clear decision frameworks, trade-offs, and actionable insights—focusing on clarity and velocity over volume.
Pressure-test strategic initiatives and customer approaches prior to broader rollout.
Provide candid, data-driven counsel in sensitive or ambiguous situations, balancing transparency with discretion.
When initiatives demonstrate impact, transition them into appropriate owning teams with clear success metrics, governance, and artifacts.
When initiatives do not meet objectives, close them decisively and capture learnings