Technical Program Manager II- Readiness Assessment & OEM Quality

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

9d • $102,100 - $219,200

About The Position

Microsoft’s Windows Ecosystem and Commercial Engagement organization is building a closed-loop quality-readiness system for strategically important third-party OEM devices. The system connects OEM and silicon readiness, structured Readiness Assessment, controlled entrance into SelfHost, launch decisions, and post-launch learning. It is intended to provide leaders and partners with reliable evidence about whether a hardware-software configuration is ready to advance, what risks remain, and who owns the next action.

The Technical Program Manager II owns the program mechanisms supporting this system, including portfolio intake, partner alignment, integrated planning, readiness governance, risk and dependency management, decision records, and executive communication. The role works across Hero Device Engineering (HDE) and Hero Device Validation (HDV) program teams, OEM and silicon partners, Windows engineering, lab and test leads, data and reporting teams, SelfHost operations, and internal marketing and sales. The TPM turns ambiguity into an operating model and technical evidence into decisions while maintaining partner trust and clear engineering accountability.

Microsoft describes its mission as empowering every person and organization to achieve more, and emphasizes a growth mindset, innovation, collaboration, respect, integrity, accountability, and inclusion.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree and at least 2 years of experience in engineering, product or technical program management, data analysis, or product development, or equivalent experience.
• At least 1 year of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor’s degree and 8+ years of experience in engineering, product or technical program management, product development, data analysis, or a related field, or equivalent experience, including 6+ years leading cross-functional or cross-team initiatives.
• At least 2 years of experience managing cross-functional or cross-team projects with interdependent technical, operational, partner, and business deliverables.
• Experience gathering business and technical requirements and translating them into program plans, milestones, readiness criteria, decision gates, metrics, and accountable actions.
• Demonstrated experience using data to assess program health, identify and mitigate risks, manage dependencies, resolve ambiguity, and influence technical and business decisions.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical and program information clearly to engineers, partner organizations, business stakeholders, and senior leaders, and to drive alignment without direct authority.
• Experience with hardware-software system readiness, Windows or another operating-system platform, device development, drivers, firmware, servicing, reliability, or product-quality programs.
• Experience managing external engineering relationships with OEMs, silicon vendors, suppliers, or other partners where trust, confidentiality, shared dependencies, and influence without authority are essential.
• Experience designing or operating readiness assessments, launch gates, validation programs, quality reviews, risk-acceptance mechanisms, or post-launch learning loops.
• Experience with Azure DevOps, Power BI, Kusto or KQL, SQL, Azure Data Explorer, or comparable planning and analytics platforms, with a solid understanding of metric definitions and data provenance.
• A track record of establishing governance and reusable mechanisms that improve delivery consistency, decision quality, organizational accountability, and measurable business or customer outcomes in a highly matrixed environment.
• Experience applying automation or AI to program workflows, analysis, reporting, or risk identification while preserving human accountability and sound judgment.
• PMP, PgMP, Lean, Six Sigma, Agile, or comparable program-management training or demonstrated practical mastery of those disciplines.
• Experience reading or writing code, queries, technical specifications, or automation logic sufficiently to collaborate effectively with software engineering, data, and tooling teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end operating model for strategic OEM device readiness initiatives, from portfolio intake and scenario definition through OEM self-assessment, Microsoft Readiness Assessment, SelfHost entrance, release milestones, and post-launch learning.
• Build and maintain integrated plans covering OEM and silicon schedules, device availability, hardware and software manifests, BIOS, firmware, drivers, images, lab capacity, assessment criteria, evidence requirements, remediation work, and decision gates.
• Build partnerships with HDE and HDV program managers, OEM counterparts, silicon partners, engineering and quality teams, internal marketing and sales, and senior leaders; clarify roles, service expectations, handoffs, decision rights, and escalation paths.
• Prioritize the portfolio using customer personas, product and sales importance, reviewer influence, new silicon or architecture risk, technical novelty, historical escapes, and available capacity; make tradeoffs visible and recommend where impartial Microsoft evidence matters most.
• Manage requests by weighing resource capacity, schedule implications, and ROI, and ensure clear outcomes, owners, capacity plans, or approved tradeoffs.
• Establish and run scalable governance, including weekly portfolio reviews, milestone and readiness reviews, integrated risk and dependency tracking, gate-exception records, and decision logs.
• Ensure each material risk has an accountable owner, next action, date, closure evidence, and escalation path.
• Facilitate readiness and entrance decisions using defined criteria, evidence confidence, hard-stop conditions, and explicit exceptions; record decision authority, rationale, residual risk, and evidence that could change the posture.
• Prevent schedule pressure or incomplete data from becoming a silent gate bypass.
• Translate assessment findings, telemetry, quality signals, and partner status into concise, decision-ready recommendations for technical and executive audiences; distinguish measured facts from targets and estimates, surface unknowns and data-quality limitations, and communicate next steps.
• Drive issue routing and follow-through across OEM, silicon, Windows, tooling, and operational owners, making ownership gaps, aging dependencies, unresolved tradeoffs, and decisions requiring leadership action visible.
• Define and improve portfolio metrics, including on-time verdicts, critical-criteria coverage, evidence completeness, receipt-to-verdict time, partner response aging, owner and disposition timeliness, capacity returned through automation, and covered post-launch escapes.
• Partner with data owners to preserve metric definitions, provenance, and confidence.
• Scale the system through reusable intake contracts, templates, playbooks, service-level expectations, retrospectives, and AI-assisted workflows.
• Partner with lab and engineering leads on test automation and OEM self-assessment while retaining deterministic validation, accountable human judgment, Microsoft audit authority, and OEM confidentiality.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level