Operations Key Account Manager

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

About The Position

The Operations Key Account Manager works within Microsoft’s Partner Enablement organization to lead complex, cross-functional partner enablement programs that connect Microsoft strategy with partner execution. The role develops a deep understanding of partner business models, capabilities, dependencies, and operational experiences, then turns partner insight into recommendations and actionable business requirements. It identifies and communicates risks early and drives partner readiness and adoption for priority launches and change moments. Serving as a trusted advisor and Voice of Partner, the role creates clarity in ambiguous situations, influences decisions without formal authority, and delivers measurable outcomes that reduce friction, strengthen trust, and improve the ease of doing business with Microsoft. It operates independently on complex programs with broad dependencies and significant partner or business impact, aligning stakeholders on outcomes, ownership, decisions, and timelines. The role leads the partner-facing change-management workstream from impact assessment through sustained adoption, while product, policy, platform, and technical delivery remain with their originating teams. It facilitates structured co-design among partners and internal teams, validates requirements and implementation feasibility, and drives readiness, issue resolution, adoption tracking, and continuous improvement. The role also develops reusable processes and scalable approaches, using data and partner evidence to influence decisions and improve outcomes beyond individual launches or partners.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or a related field and 4+ years of experience in program management, process management, or process improvement, or equivalent experience.
Experience working in global, cross-functional, and highly matrixed environments.
Demonstrated record delivering complex programs, launches, operational changes, or improvement initiatives with competing priorities.
Experience in partner channel management, partner operations, customer relationship management, customer success, or strategic account engagement.
Ability to translate technical, operational, and business requirements into clear plans, recommendations, and executive-ready communications.
Strong project and change-management skills, including change-impact assessment, stakeholder and resistance planning, readiness criteria, adoption measurement, navigating ambiguity, resolving conflict, negotiating trade-offs, and developing practical solutions.
Strong analytical skills using data, reporting, dashboards, KPIs, and qualitative insight to influence decisions and monitor outcomes.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including explaining complex subjects to global audiences and engaging effectively across levels and cultures.
Demonstrated ability to influence and build relationships across organizational boundaries with internal and external stakeholders.
Ability to identify systemic issues and apply industry practices, standardization, automation, AI, continuous improvement, or self-service solutions to improve scale and sustainability.
Independent, flexible, and proactive approach, with the ability to identify strategic opportunities, develop proposals, and gain stakeholder alignment.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Operations, Finance, Supply Chain, Technology, Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field and 8+ years of relevant experience, or equivalent experience.
Understanding of cloud, commerce, digital platforms, partner ecosystems, security, compliance, or lifecycle operations.

Responsibilities

Drive partner enablement across end-to-end partner lifecycle processes to reduce friction and improve the ease of doing business with Microsoft.
Build trusted partner relationships and structured engagement rhythms to surface priorities, pain points, requirements, risks, and emerging needs.
Understand partner business models, capabilities, technical and operational dependencies, and change impacts.
Translate Microsoft business, product, engineering, policy, security, compliance, and platform changes into clear partner actions and operational implications.
Represent the Voice of Partner and use partner evidence to influence requirements, design, prioritization, roadmaps, and launch decisions.
Assess and prioritize partner requirements, translating partner requests into business requirements, recommendations, or experience improvements.
Communicate partner risks and concerns with their business and operational impact, ownership needs, and mitigation or risk-acceptance decisions.
Identify broader patterns and systemic opportunities from individual partner experiences and close the feedback loop with partners and internal stakeholders.
Plan and facilitate structured co-design engagements between representative partners and engineering teams for changes meeting impact, complexity, or risk criteria.
Set co-design objectives, partner scenarios, decision questions, constraints, and expected outputs.
Translate partner workflows, technical dependencies, implementation effort, and operational constraints into prioritized requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, or design recommendations.
Work with engineering and product owners to clarify what can be influenced, what is fixed, and what requires a trade-off, exception, or risk-acceptance decision.
Coordinate previews, pilots, sandbox or test-environment validation, and implementation walkthroughs to check the usability of guidance, tooling, APIs, support paths, and operational processes before broad release.
Document co-design decisions, owners, unresolved issues, and feedback disposition, and explain to participating partners what changed and why.
Own partner change-management and readiness plans for priority launches and key change moments, including narratives, affected segments, partner actions, deliverables, milestones, dependencies, success measures, risks, communications inputs, and stakeholder updates.
Assess change impact and cumulative change burden across partner models, geographies, roles, architectures, processes, and overlapping timelines; identify when sequencing, scope, or support should change.
Define evidence-based readiness criteria and distinguish prepared, at-risk, not-ready, and unknown statuses to inform launch, mitigation, escalation, and exception decisions.
Escalate blockers early with business impact, accountable ownership, and resolution needs, and drive mitigation before critical milestones and go-live.
Track implementation and adoption through and after go-live, verify partner actions and intended outcomes, and transition unresolved issues or ongoing support needs to accountable owners.
Use preparedness, adoption, operational, business, and qualitative data to identify trends, risks, opportunities, and systemic gaps.
Define measurable success criteria and provide concise, decision-ready executive narratives with assessments, recommendations, trade-offs, and required actions.
Standardize services, simplify processes, reduce manual work, and advance automation, AI-enabled insights, and self-service enablement models.
Balance high-touch partner engagement with scalable, preventative solutions for recurring ecosystem friction.
Collaborate across engineering, business planning, product and launch, sales, operations, support, compliance, and enablement teams.
Convene stakeholders to clarify accountability, decisions, and next steps and resolve ambiguous cross-organizational problems.
Influence without direct authority using partner evidence, judgment, business impact, and data; recommend a path forward when information is incomplete.
Identify end-to-end opportunities and apply strategic thinking, adaptability, and thought leadership to drive business impact.