Senior Program Manager - Customer Reliability Engineering

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

4d•$119,800 - $261,000

About The Position

In Engineering Operations (EngOps), we drive operational excellence across the Microsoft Cloud to improve reliability, security, and customer trust at scale. The EngOps Customer Reliability Engineering (CRE) team has combined a customer-first and engineering-minded approach where we strive to design the complete customer experience from end-to-end. As part of Azure, we consistently innovate and create new solutions to solve some of our most strategic and challenging problems. Owning Customer Health within CRE, our mission is to reduce risk, improve customer health and restore trust for critical customers. We work with customers to strengthen workload resiliency, resolve escalations, and scale through standards, integrated AI, and targeted platform improvements. We obsess over improving both customer outcomes and Azure platform reliability. As a Customer Experience Program Manager, you will lead a portfolio of high-impact initiatives focused on improving the health, resiliency, and operational maturity of Microsoft’s most critical customer workloads. You will operate at the intersection of customer engagement and platform engineering - translating insights into durable, systemic improvements that benefit both individual customers and contribute to the broader Azure ecosystem. This role requires strategic thinking, situational judgment, and deep execution. You will influence service design, help shape investment priorities, and lead cross-organizational efforts to mitigate risks, improve platform reliability, and strengthen customer confidence. You will partner closely with engineering, product, support, and field teams, and regularly engage senior stakeholders to align priorities and drive measurable outcomes. Success in this role requires technical depth, executive-level communication, and the ability to operate across ambiguity - turning complex customer challenges into scalable solutions that improve the Microsoft Cloud for all. 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

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Math, Business, or related field AND 4+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter
Master's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Math, Business, or related field AND 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Math, Business, or related field AND 8+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience
3+ years of customer-facing experience

Responsibilities

Serve as a trusted advisor for strategic customers, ensuring their most critical workloads are resilient, well architected, and aligned with Azure best practices.
Drive measurable improvements in customer health through proactive risk identification, data driven assessments, and targeted resiliency improvements.
Analyze customer architectures and operational patterns to identify gaps and recommend actions that improve reliability and operational maturity.
Own customer engagement across the lifecycle - prevention, detection, incident response, and recovery – to improve resiliency and reduce recurrence of issues.
Executive-level coordination and communication during critical customer events, driving clarity, alignment, and trust restoration.
Convert incidents and escalations into durable improvements across customers and the platform.
Drive durable, repeatable improvements that address systemic issues across customers, services, and scenarios.
Translate customer pain points, incidents, and operational gaps into platform-level enhancements. Influence product design, roadmap priorities, and inform engineering investments.
Drive alignment across engineering, product, business, and support teams to deliver end to end solutions that address customer and platform needs.
Influence decision making across teams, shaping priorities, tradeoffs, and execution, while acting as a trusted advisor on feature improvements and platform enhancements.
Drive a portfolio of initiatives with multi-quarter impact, delivering measurable outcomes for customers and the platform.
Translate business priorities and customer signals into clear strategies and execution plans, navigating ambiguity and unblocking complex challenges to drive progress.