Senior Director, Engineering Leader

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

19h•$142,800 - $304,200

About The Position

At Innovation & Technology Programs (ITP), the engineering organization builds and continually reinvents the technology behind Microsoft’s Customer Service & Support (CSS) and Customer Success Unit (CSU) businesses. ITP is part of the Office of the CTO (OCTO) within MCAPS-Core and works across product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners to accelerate customer outcomes and business growth. Engineering is organized around Innovation, Production, and a shared Tech Ops function. Microsoft is seeking a Senior Director of Engineering to lead the engineering platforms behind CSS and CSU. The role owns end-to-end engineering strategy, organizational health, customer experience, and business outcomes. The leader will direct a multidisciplinary, globally distributed engineering organization, define multi-year technical strategy, guide major engineering and workforce investments, and deliver secure, reliable, responsible experiences at global scale. The position makes AI transformation central to engineering practices and drives AI adoption across engineering, ITP, and the businesses served. The successful candidate will be an experienced people manager and leader of leaders, combining executive organizational leadership with technical depth. The role remains engaged in consequential architecture, design, modernization, reliability, security, and live-site decisions while delivering through managers and senior technical leaders. It requires creating clarity across organizational boundaries and partnering with engineering, product, design, research, marketing, sales, customer success, and other Microsoft organizations to achieve customer and business impact. Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Employees work with a growth mindset, innovate, collaborate, and uphold respect, integrity, and accountability in an inclusive culture.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.
Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience coding in the listed or comparable languages, or a bachelor’s degree in the field and 12+ years of such experience, or equivalent experience.
4+ years of people management experience, including leading engineering managers and delivering results through multiple teams.
Experience as a leader of leaders, including setting expectations for senior managers, developing leadership capability, managing performance, and maintaining succession plans for business-critical roles.
Experience defining and executing product and technical strategy for a complex, business-critical portfolio.
Demonstrated success delivering secure, reliable, high-quality products or services at significant scale.
Experience leading engineering teams in AI-first development practices, such as AI-assisted coding, agentic workflows, and AI-driven testing, code review, and operations.
Ability to lead organizational AI transformation while maintaining delivery commitments and service health.
Experience making engineering investment decisions, managing organizational and technical risk, and operating effectively in ambiguous environments.
Ability to embrace change, push boundaries, and continuously improve how teams work and operate.
Ability to influence senior leaders and align stakeholders across organizational and functional boundaries.
Proficient executive-level written and verbal communication skills.
Experience leading a globally distributed engineering organization and developing senior engineering leaders.
Experience managing a portfolio spanning multiple products, platforms, services, or technical disciplines.
Prior engineering leader or equivalent experience with direct accountability for a significant engineering portfolio, organizational operating model, investment decisions, and measurable customer or business outcomes.
Experience applying AI and automation to improve customer experiences, engineering productivity, and operational performance.
Proficient business judgment, including experience with portfolio planning, workforce planning, budgeting, and prioritization.
Track record of building inclusive, accountable, and high-performing organizations.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with Microsoft engineering tools and services, such as Azure, GitHub and GitHub Copilot, Azure DevOps, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform.
Experience partnering directly with enterprise customers, strategic partners, regulators, or external industry leaders.

Responsibilities

Define and communicate the engineering vision, aligning technical and AI investments with customer needs, market opportunities, and Microsoft’s broader strategy.
Drive AI adoption and transformation within engineering and across ITP, CSS, CSU, and MCAPS; model AI-first practices and scale tools, agents, and ways of working.
Own a defined portfolio and establish measurable objectives for customer value, business performance, service health, engineering effectiveness, and organizational capability.
Allocate Innovation, production engineering squads, and shared Tech Ops capacity across delivery, strategy, and disruption priorities.
Lead, coach, and develop engineering managers, architects, and engineers, establishing accountability and empowering leaders to make effective decisions.
Translate long-term business and technical strategies into roadmaps, milestones, resource plans, and measurable customer and business outcomes.
Guide architecture and engineering investments.
Partner with OCTO and ITP Partner Architects to uphold acceptance standards for partner-built engineering and AI systems and maintain a coherent engineering portfolio.
Engage directly in critical architecture and design reviews, major technical tradeoffs, security and privacy decisions, and responses to consequential live-site incidents.
Drive engineering excellence across design, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, incident response, and ongoing service operations.
Champion security, privacy, accessibility, responsible AI, compliance, reliability, performance, and quality throughout the product lifecycle.
Build partnerships with customers and partners and incorporate their needs and feedback into product strategy and engineering priorities.
Make portfolio and investment decisions, manage technical and operational risks, and balance near-term delivery with long-term platform health and innovation.
Partner across organizational boundaries to resolve complex dependencies and deliver integrated experiences using a One Microsoft approach.
Communicate strategy, progress, risks, and decisions to senior executives, customers, partners, and the broader organization.
Attract, retain, and develop diverse leadership and engineering talent; strengthen succession plans and organizational capability.
Own workforce strategy, leadership succession, organizational design, capacity planning, and budget or investment allocation for the engineering portfolio.
Foster an inclusive culture grounded in customer obsession, growth mindset, accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning.
Model Microsoft’s leadership principles by creating clarity, generating energy, and delivering success.