Principal Technical Program Manager

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

16d

About The Position

The Office of the CTO (OCTO) is responsible for tackling Microsoft's most challenging and forward-looking technical issues, collaborating across research, engineering, product, and business units. OCTO is a dynamic environment where priorities shift rapidly, problems are often ambiguous, and success depends on good judgment, adaptability, influence, and persistence. We seek individuals who are curious, technically confident, action-oriented, and driven to create company-scale impact from ambitious ideas. The Microsoft-OpenAI partnership is a key focus, involving frontier AI development, cloud infrastructure, products, safety, security, commercialization, legal aspects, and long-term business strategy. Effective operation within this partnership requires clear priorities, disciplined execution, strong communication, and close coordination between leaders and teams at both Microsoft and OpenAI. We are looking for a highly strategic and execution-focused leader to serve as the OpenAI Partnership Operations Lead. This role will establish the operational framework for the partnership, creating structure for numerous moving parts, maintaining a comprehensive overview of priorities and dependencies, driving accountability for commitments, providing leadership visibility, and ensuring critical issues are resolved. This principal-level position requires exceptional operational discipline combined with strategic judgment. The ideal candidate will not only understand the partnership's activities but also their significance, the best approaches, communication strategies, and future needs for Microsoft.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree AND 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
8+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
1+ year(s) of experience reading and/or writing code (e.g., sample documentation, product demos).
Extensive experience leading complex, cross-functional technical programs, strategic operations, business operations, or company-wide initiatives.
Demonstrated ability to create structure and drive execution in fast-moving environments with unclear ownership, competing priorities, and incomplete information.
Strong strategic judgment and the ability to connect operational decisions to broader business and technology objectives.
Exceptional organizational ability, including the capacity to maintain context across many concurrent workstreams while identifying the issues that matter most.
Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries, drive accountability, and move complex work toward resolution without direct authority.
Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, including experience advising senior leaders and synthesizing complex information into clear, decision-oriented recommendations.
Familiarity with AI development, cloud platforms, infrastructure, product commercialization, or emerging technologies.
Experience supporting a major technology partnership or cross-company initiative, including communicating and coordinating directly with external partners on complex technical or strategic work.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's Degree AND 12+ years experience engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
3+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

Responsibilities

Lead partnership operations, owning and improving the operating model for the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership.
Create structure across a complex portfolio of priorities, workstreams, stakeholders, decisions, commitments, and dependencies.
Establish effective operating rhythms, governance mechanisms, communication channels, and decision processes.
Ensure the partnership functions as a coordinated system, not a collection of disconnected initiatives.
Identify and address friction points in inter-team collaboration to enhance speed, clarity, and effectiveness.
Maintain the full partnership context by developing and maintaining a comprehensive view of Microsoft's priorities, activities, commitments, risks, opportunities, and unmet needs.
Connect information across product, engineering, research, infrastructure, safety, security, Legal, business, and executive discussions.
Understand the strategic and technical context of major workstreams to ensure operational decisions align with Microsoft's broader objectives.
Identify patterns, cross-workstream dependencies, and emerging issues not visible to individual teams.
Serve as a trusted source of context for the Head of OpenAI Partnership and other senior stakeholders.
Drive execution and accountability by translating partnership priorities and leadership decisions into clear plans, owners, milestones, dependencies, and outcomes.
Ensure commitments are documented, understood, and completed.
Recognize stalled work, identify barriers, and drive resolution.
Hold stakeholders accountable for commitments across organizational boundaries and seniority while maintaining productive relationships.
Differentiate between issues resolvable by teams and those requiring broader alignment, leadership attention, or escalation.
Maintain a strong focus on outcomes over activity, reporting, or process for its own sake.
Apply strategic judgment to operations by connecting daily execution to broader partnership objectives and long-term AI strategy.
Evaluate the approach and focus of work to ensure alignment with objectives.
Identify gaps between strategy and execution and recommend changes to priorities, operating models, sequencing, or stakeholder engagement.
Anticipate second-order effects, downstream dependencies, and potential risks.
Use operational insight to help refine priorities and inform leadership decisions.
Challenge assumptions and surface concerns about current approaches.
Provide leadership visibility and decision support by giving the Head of OpenAI Partnership and senior leaders a clear, current, and decision-oriented view of the partnership.
Synthesize complex information into concise explanations of status, significance, risks, and recommended actions.
Prepare leadership for important reviews, decisions, and discussions with OpenAI.
Ensure communications are tailored, context-grounded, and action-oriented.
Surface material changes, unresolved decisions, and emerging risks early to minimize surprises.
Ensure leadership discussions result in clear decisions, owners, and follow-through.
Launch new partnership initiatives by turning ideas and priorities into executable engagements with Microsoft and OpenAI stakeholders.
Clarify objectives, outcomes, scope, stakeholders, dependencies, ownership, and success criteria for new initiatives.
Convene leaders and teams across Microsoft and OpenAI to establish alignment and initiate execution.
Create initial operating structures, governance, communication models, and execution plans for new engagements.
Guide new engagements from concept through initial execution and integration into the partnership operating model.
Transition mature initiatives to long-term owners while maintaining visibility into dependencies and partnership implications.
Coordinate across Microsoft and OpenAI by building trusted relationships with leaders, engineers, researchers, business leaders, legal professionals, and executives.
Ensure Microsoft teams are coordinated when engaging OpenAI on shared priorities.
Navigate differing perspectives, unclear ownership, and competing priorities with sound judgment and professionalism.
Facilitate discussions and help stakeholders reach decisions without unnecessary process or bureaucracy.
Represent Microsoft's priorities, needs, and context clearly in operational discussions with OpenAI.