Senior Technical Program Manager, AI-Driven Deal Approvals

Microsoft

About The Position

With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, 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. Join CE&S and help us accelerate AI transformation for our customers and the world. The Customer Success & Delivery (CSD) team creates compelling digital experiences across the Services business by leveraging the full breadth of Microsoft technology and solutions to realize business outcomes and results, across CE&S (Customer Experience & Success). As a Technical Program Manager on the CSD team, you will drive the delivery of innovative digital customer engagement experiences where you will focus on “AI Driven Approvals” through system and tooling innovation. Hundreds of approvals are granted each week across the business before a deal can be closed – each one takes human review and delays deal completion. The advances in AI gives us an opportunity to re-imagine the types of approvals, the process we follow and implement technology to automate and assist approval workflows leveraging AI. You will orchestrate cross-functional initiatives to determine a new approach to approvals and partner with engineering to implement new functionality. 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 AND 4+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
2+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
6+ 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).
2+ years experience with Customer Success processes including approval workflows, offering design and enablement.
Translate policies, governance requirements, and business frameworks into clear, testable approval automation requirements and guardrails.
Define user stories, acceptance criteria, and measurable outcomes (cycle time, approvals removed, exception reduction).
Apply robust technical literacy to workflow design, including dependencies across tools/services, data flows, and handoffs.
Lead enterprise-scale transformation from manual, approval-heavy processes to policy-driven, automated/AI-assisted approval experiences embedded in deal flow.
Own backlog shaping, prioritization, release planning, and dependency/risk management in ADO.
Designed and executed BVT/UAT, ideally for AI focused feature released.
Document defects, gaps, and change requests with precision to drive rapid iteration and reduce approval regressions.
Map current-state vs future-state approval journeys and identify high-impact simplification opportunities.
Represent business needs in engineering forums and translate engineering constraints into practical policy + platform solutions.
Influence cross-functional stakeholders (policy, compliance, sales, engineering, operations) to land changes with clarity, readiness, and adoption.

Responsibilities

Lead the re‑imagination of deal approvals through AI‑first design—shifting from manual, exception‑driven workflows to policy‑led, automated, and agent‑assisted approval experiences.
Own prioritization and delivery of approval modernization initiatives, ensuring simplified, scalable approval paths that accelerate deal velocity while maintaining governance and compliance.
Drive complex cross‑functional execution across sales, finance, deal desk, engineering, and operations to align approval policies, tooling, and field experience end‑to-end.
Define and track success metrics (OKRs, KPIs) tied to approval cycle time, exception reduction, seller productivity, and first‑pass deal accuracy.
Partner closely with engineering to translate approval strategy into actionable product roadmaps that deliver measurable business outcomes.
Author clear user stories, technical requirements, and acceptance criteria focused on approval automation, decision intelligence, and guardrail enforcement.
Use Azure DevOps (ADO) as the system of record to manage approval backlogs, dependencies, releases, and transparent, data‑driven delivery.
Design and execute Business Value Testing (BVT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to validate approval flows, edge cases, and policy adherence before scale.
Lead staging, pilots, and phased rollouts of new approval experiences, ensuring readiness, adoption, and controlled risk introduction.
Ensure operational supportability through clear documentation, diagnostics, and guidance for approval scenarios and exception handling.
Serve as a trusted advisor and evangelist for modern approval models, educating stakeholders on AI‑assisted decisioning and governance by design.
Continuously refine approval processes and use cases, raising the bar on speed, quality, and consistency across the deal lifecycle.