OverviewThe Microsoft 365 Routing Plane sits on the critical path for billions of requests every day and is fundamental to the scalability, reliability, economics, and security of Microsoft 365. As demand accelerates with Copilot, agentic AI, and continued cloud growth - and as the infrastructure that supports it becomes increasingly supply-constrained - the platform must continuously evolve to increase efficiency, optimize infrastructure investments, and enable the next generation of Microsoft 365 services.
We're looking for a Senior Product Manager to own platform evolution across the Routing Plane. This is a broad role for a builder who moves fluidly from one high-impact problem to the next - taking on the biggest open challenges and, once one is resolved, flowing to the next rather than holding a single fixed area. You will partner across engineering, Azure, capacity planning, and infrastructure organizations to identify the highest-impact opportunities, shape long-term strategy, and drive platform-wide improvements that increase performance, resiliency, scalability, and cost efficiency. You will lead the efficiency strategy that keeps the Microsoft 365 Routing Plane sustainable as it grows - improving both its performance and cost efficiency, advancing Azure-native deployment models, and driving long-term COGS reduction.
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- Own the strategy for platform evolution across the M365 Routing Plane, and turn that direction into a roadmap teams can execute.
- Drive platform-wide efficiency - improving how much useful work the platform delivers per unit of infrastructure, and the cost of serving it - through platform optimization, Azure-native deployment models, and long-term COGS reduction.
- Take on high-impact problems across the charter, including performance, resiliency, scalability, capacity, and platform transitions, and drive them to a result.
- Ensure the Routing Plane can sustainably absorb new demand from Copilot, agentic AI, and continued cloud growth within a supply-constrained infrastructure environment.
- Use AI-driven analysis of demand signals, telemetry, and operational data to forecast more accurately, catch performance 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, platform, 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 platform investments with partners across engineering, Azure, finance, and supply chain.
- Advance Azure-native deployment and platform transition strategy, and help the platform 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.
QualificationsRequired Qualifications:- Bachelor's Degree AND 5+ 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 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
- OR equivalent experience.
- 2+ years experience taking a product, feature, or experience to market (e.g., design, addressing product market fit, and launch, internal tool/framework).
- 4+ 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).
- 4+ years experience disrupting a market for a product, feature, or experience (e.g., competitive disruption, taking the place of an established competing product).
- A track record of driving ambiguous, high-impact problems end-to-end to a measurable result - bias for action and ownership.
- Technical depth in large-scale distributed systems, infrastructure, networking, or cloud platforms - enough to reason with architects about performance, capacity, connections, memory, and cost, and to explain those tradeoffs clearly to any audience.
- Sound judgment and decisiveness under uncertainty - able to make and defend cost-versus-performance-versus-reliability tradeoffs.
- Influence without authority, cross-functional leadership, and executive communication - moves outcomes across various stakeholders and turns complex technical and financial tradeoffs into decisions leaders can act on.
- Agility - thrives moving fluidly from one problem to the next as priorities shift, and picks up new tools and ways of working quickly.
- Data fluency - comfort working from telemetry and operational and financial data to model tradeoffs and reach decisions.
- Critical thinking and first-principles problem-solving in unfamiliar domains.
- Strategic thinking and product strategy - shapes multi-year direction and turns it into an executable roadmap.
Product Management IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $160,200 - $261,000 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.
