Principal Product Manager

Architect the agentic loops behind Microsoft 365 and Copilot performance and scale. This role defines how data, AI agents, and automated engineering workflows connect into closed-loop systems that continuously find, prioritize, and land performance, token, and efficiency improvements at hyperscale. 

The Microsoft 365 Core Platform team is hiring a Principal Product Manager to architect the agentic systems behind performance, latency, scalability, efficiency, reliability, and resource optimization across the server-side systems that power Microsoft 365 and Copilot. This is a broad role for someone who likes moving across the platform rather than holding a single area, and who is comfortable picking up high-impact work that spans teams. The focus is the infrastructure that keeps these products fast and efficient as AI workloads grow, and the systems that make improving that infrastructure continuous rather than manual. 

Many optimization work in the past was found by hand. This role changes that. You will drive the technical direction for closed-loop systems that detect regressions and inefficiencies from telemetry, quantify their impact, propose and generate fixes through AI agents, route work to the right engineering teams, and verify the savings once landed. You will own how these loops fit together across performance, prompt and token efficiency, caching, reliability, and resource consumption, so improvements are repeatable across workloads rather than rediscovered one at a time. 

This is an AI-first product management role. You will use agents, automation, and AI-driven analysis alongside standard PM tools to read telemetry, test ideas, prototype solutions, and reach decisions faster. You will translate hard technical topics into business terms and help the team plan, prioritize, and ship with AI built into how the work gets done. 

You will work across platform architecture, distributed systems, AI-powered services, and engineering teams, with strong product sense, technical depth, AI fluency, and comfort working with data. The role depends on close partnership with engineering leaders and architects across Microsoft and carries broad visibility and influence across the company. 

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.

• Define the technical architecture for agentic performance and efficiency loops across Microsoft 365 and Copilot, and set the direction for how detection, analysis, remediation, and verification connect end to end.
• Drive the AI-first systems that turn telemetry and operational signals into detected inefficiencies, quantified impact, prioritized work, and verified savings with minimal manual intervention.
• Shape platform strategy for the performance, efficiency, and scale work that matters most, and turn that direction into a roadmap teams can execute.
• Find and lead the work that reduces latency and raises efficiency, using AI-driven analysis of telemetry, experiments, and operational signals to catch issues early and fix them at the root.
• Drive token efficiency as a platform discipline, including prompt structure, caching, model selection tradeoffs, and token economics, and make regressions observable.
• Use agents, automation, and AIOps to analyze data, coordinate work across teams, and act on what you learn, including agent-generated fixes carried through to completion.
• Use AI prototyping to model tradeoffs, test scenarios, and stress-test platform investments before committing, paired with solid product and engineering judgment.
• Weigh tradeoffs and prioritize long-term platform investments with partners in other organizations.
• Work with engineering leaders, architects, and data scientists to improve platform capabilities and operations at hyperscale.
• Lead cross-organization initiatives that improve efficiency and speed up engineering velocity so Microsoft 365 and Copilot keep scaling.
• Set success metrics, OKRs, and KPIs, and shape investment priorities with leadership.
• Explain complex technical tradeoffs to executives in a way that leads to decisions.
• Mentor other PMs and move the team toward better, AI-forward ways of working. 

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 designing platform-level systems, frameworks, or internal tooling that other engineering teams adopt and build on.
• Experience with observability, experimentation frameworks, and closed-loop, self-healing, or automated remediation systems.
• Experience with AI inference systems, prompt optimization, token efficiency, caching, or model selection tradeoffs at scale.
• Experience taking on ambiguous, high-stakes work and driving it from strategy through execution across organizations.
• Experience leading large-scale cloud platform, distributed systems, or AI-powered services work, with a strong grasp of distributed systems and hyperscale service delivery.
• A record of improving latency, performance, scalability, reliability, efficiency, or operational cost through product leadership.
• AI fluency, including using AI agents, automation, and prototyping to speed up analysis, decisions, and product work.
• Experience using telemetry, A/B flights and experiments, and operational data to guide platform strategy and investment decisions.
• Solid systems-level problem solving, with the ability to influence senior leaders and align stakeholders across organizations. 

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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.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.