Microsoft

Principal Product Manager

Microsoft$142K — $274K *
Information Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years in product/service/program management or software development, or equivalent experience.
  • 12+ years in product/service/program management or software development, preferred.
  • 4+ years experience in bringing a product to market.
  • 6+ years improving product metrics and customer usage.
  • Experience with AI-driven workflows and systems-level problem solving.

Responsibilities

  • Shape strategy and roadmap for capacity and fleet management across Microsoft 365.
  • Drive results on high-impact problems like capacity planning and fleet health.
  • Leverage AI analysis for accurate forecasting and early issue detection.
  • Utilize automation and AI Ops for data-driven coordination and actions.
  • Model tradeoffs using AI for informed investment decisions.
  • Prioritize capacity investments based on cost, performance, and reliability.
  • Advance transition strategies for platforms and hardware.

Benefits

  • Health, dental, and vision insurance.
  • 401(k) retirement plan with company match.
  • Employee stock purchase program.
  • Generous paid time off and holidays.
  • Ongoing professional development opportunities.
Full Job Description
Overview

The Microsoft 365 Core Platform team is hiring a Principal Product Manager for its Fleet & Capacity team, the group that puts the right infrastructure in the right places at the right time for every Microsoft 365 workload. The team plans, delivers, and operates the fleet behind Microsoft 365, and it directs billions of dollars in capacity investment each year. This is a broad role for a builder who wants to move across the charter and take on the biggest open problems rather than hold a single fixed area.

The work spans demand forecasting, capacity investment planning, platform and hardware strategy, supply and demand balancing, capacity delivery, live fleet operations, and decommissioning. AI growth is reshaping all of it. Demand is larger and less predictable than it has ever been, hardware choices carry more weight, and the cost of getting capacity wrong scales with the fleet. You will help the team decide where to invest, when to build, what to run it on, and how to keep the fleet healthy and efficient as it grows.

This is an AI-first product management role. You will use agents, automation, and AI-driven analysis alongside standard PM tools to read telemetry, model tradeoffs, prototype solutions, and reach decisions faster. You will translate hard technical and financial tradeoffs into terms leaders can act on, and you will help move the team toward AI-forward ways of working, including evaluation sets and agent-based workflows built into how the work gets done.

You will partner closely with engineering leaders, architects, data scientists, finance, and supply chain across Microsoft. The role carries broad visibility and influence, and it depends on strong product sense, technical depth, data fluency, and clear judgment under uncertainty.

This position is based in Redmond, Washington and requires the employee be in the office a minimum of 3 days per week.

Responsibilities

  • Shape the strategy for the capacity and fleet work that matters most across Microsoft 365, and turn that direction into a roadmap teams can execute.
  • Take on high-impact problems across the charter, including capacity planning, supply and demand balancing, fleet health, platform transitions, and decommissioning, and drive them to a result.
  • Use AI-driven analysis of demand signals, telemetry, and operational data to forecast more accurately, catch capacity and reliability issues early, and fix them at the root.
  • Use agents, automation, and AI Ops to analyze data, coordinate work, and act on what you learn.
  • Model capacity and hardware tradeoffs with AI prototyping and scenario testing before committing investment, paired with solid product, engineering, and financial judgment.
  • Weigh cost, performance, and reliability against each other, and prioritize multi-year capacity investments with partners across engineering, finance, and supply chain.
  • Advance platform and hardware transition strategy, and help the fleet run more efficiently as workloads grow.
  • Set success metrics, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), and KPIs (key performance indicators), and shape investment priorities with leadership.
  • Explain complex technical and financial tradeoffs to executives in a way that leads to decisions.
  • Mentor other product managers and move the team toward better, AI-forward ways of working.


Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

  • Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
    • OR equivalent experience.


Other Requirements:

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.


Preferred Qualifications:
  • Bachelor's Degree AND 12+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
    • OR equivalent experience.
  • 4+ years experience taking a product, feature, or experience to market (e.g., design, addressing product market fit, and launch, internal tool/framework).
  • 6+ years experience improving product metrics for a product, feature, or experience in a market (e.g., growing customer base, expanding customer usage, avoiding customer churn).
  • 6+ years experience disrupting a market for a product, feature, or experience (e.g., competitive disruption, taking the place of an established competing product).
  • Experience taking on ambiguous, high-stakes work and driving it from strategy through execution across organizations.
  • Experience leading large-scale cloud infrastructure, capacity planning, or distributed systems work, with grasp of hyperscale service delivery.
  • AI fluency, including using AI agents, automation, and prototyping to speed up analysis, decisions, and product work.
  • Experience using telemetry, demand signals, and operational data to guide platform and investment decisions.
  • Systems-level problem solving and clear communication, with the ability to influence senior leaders and align stakeholders across organizations.

#M365Core, #M365CorePlatform, #M365FleetCapacity

Product Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

About Microsoft

Microsoft is an American multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services. Microsoft’s devices and consumer (D&C) licensing segment licenses the Windows operating system and related software, Microsoft Office for consumers, and the Windows Phone operating system. The company’s computing and gaming hardware segment provides Xbox gaming and entertainment consoles and accessories, second-party and third-party video games, and Xbox Live subscriptions; surface devices and accessories; and Microsoft PC accessories. Its phone hardware segment offers Lumia smartphones and other non-Lumia phones. Its D&C segment provides Windows Store, Xbox Live transactions, and Windows phone store; search advertising; display advertising; Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal; first-party video games; and other consumer products and services as well as operating retail stores. Microsoft’s commercial licensing segments license server products, including Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (CALs); Windows Embedded; Windows operating system; Microsoft Office for business, including Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and related CALs; Microsoft Dynamics business solutions; and Skype. Its commercial segment offers enterprise services, including premier support services and Microsoft consulting services; commercial cloud comprising Office 365 Commercial, other Microsoft Office online offerings, Dynamics CRM Online, and Microsoft Azure; and other commercial products and online services. The company markets and distributes its products through original equipment manufacturers, distributors, and resellers, as well as online.

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Learn more about Microsoft
Size
181,000 employees
Market Cap
$1,762.4 billion
Industry
Net Income
$51.3 billion
Founded
1975
5 Year Trend
+15.5%
Revenue
$153.2 billion
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