Senior Forensic Engineering Program Manager

Microsoft Cloud Operations and Innovation (CO+I) is the engine that powers our cloud services. Our infrastructure is comprised of a large global portfolio of more than one hundred datacenters and one million servers. Our foundation is built upon and managed by a team of subject matter experts, who work tirelessly to support digital services for more than one billion customers and twenty million businesses in over ninety countries worldwide. 

Within CO+I, the Core Datacenter Services (CDS) team is responsible for advancing availability and efficiency for Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. We have multiple teams focused on both Microsoft and Lessor datacenter performance and all aspects of datacenter utilization effectiveness that includes power, water and labor. We are seeking a Senior Forensic Engineering Program Manager to support our forensic engineering program, driving containment and risk mitigation, and helping improve availability.

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. 

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.  

Required/Minimum Qualifications:

• 7+ years of technical engineering experience
  • OR Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 5+ years of technical engineering experience
  • OR Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years of technical engineering experience
  • OR Doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field
• 2+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

• Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in 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). 

Hardware Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $117,200 - $229,200 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 $153,600 - $250,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until January 16, 2025.

Analysis of Customer and Market Signals:

• Understands and starts to build experiences across multiple groups or divisions.
• Starts to coach internal teams to develop problem statements and form hypotheses of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) to address complex business, program, and customer needs, and/or market opportunities; identifies all dependencies effected by the proposal.
• Owns and performs experiments to test hypotheses and inform decisions on what multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) to introduce.
• Establishes clarity of patterns of root problem and how it relates with previously seen trends across customers; determines the customers/sectors impacted, and provides research evidence to determine priorities.
• Determines and leads process improvements to quickly scope insights.
• Ensures alignment between the customer, the market, internal stakeholders, and the goals of and strategy of Microsoft.
• Collaborates with others (e.g., Engineering, Marketing, Design) to ensure that they can satisfy customer requirements.
• Evaluates the opportunity to determine for greatest value to the business. Defines solution options and proposed solution roadmap across multiple feature areas within multiple stages.
• Identifies complex opportunities and gaps in the implementation of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) including comparison of various quality and performance metrics to various solutions.
• May lead customer engagements to solicit feedback and understand their experiences with Microsoft's products and services.
• Independently performs complex market research in collaboration with other teams, conducts competitive analyses, and examines customer and technology-related industry trends, as well as industry-specific requirements or regulations.
• Integrates relevant data on product usage, product telemetry, and service data together to identify complex patterns, generate hypotheses, and build a plan to change the product.

Product/Service Definition:

• Defines success criteria and performance metrics (e.g., Objectives and Key Results [OKRs], Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] such as quality and performance) of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) and works with Software and Hardware Engineering to ensure needed telemetry is developed.
• Deeply understands the return on investment and presents it to key stakeholders.
• Defines the program(s) goals and prioritization for the multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) they own.
• Translates the needs of the organization and other teams into program goals and prioritized deliverables based on data-focused analysis.
• Engages in active risk management (proactive and reactive) to identify risks and propose mitigations for risks using data (e.g., telemetry, usage, net satisfaction, customer satisfaction).
• Partners with Software and Hardware Engineering to design architecture and integrated customer solutions to complex technical needs for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service).
• Proposes design and architecture documents for multiple feature areas.
• Understands what options are available and partners with others to identify and select best option for needs, and creates new solutions if needed.
• Collaborates with architects and technical partners to develop architecture. Works with internal and external technical partners and/or architects to represent technical solutions to customers.

Product/Service Development:

• Contributes to the development of the staging and implementation plan for piloting/release in alignment with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) Collaborates with stakeholders to monitor progress and adjust as needed.
• Manages governance programs and processes to ensure that specific performance requirements and standards are met throughout the development lifecycle (e.g., quality, compliance, privacy, security, safety, accessibility).
• Collaborates with others to track, coordinate, and communicate end-to-end project schedules (e.g., epics, sprint/semester plans, milestones, timelines, releases) for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service).
• Works with others to establish and monitor processes, and helps hold stakeholders accountable for following the established schedule and processes.
• Helps track and manage dependencies to enable cohesive, connected user scenarios, and to identify potential risk areas and escalate appropriately.
• Makes adjustments or course corrections when projects are not aligned to schedules or goals.
• Creates relationships to drive orchestration and integration efforts for the development and implementation process of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, services) for large and complex cross functional projects with internal teams and external partners.
• Collaborates and coordinates across organizations to ensure alignment on product management and release, including tradeoffs, adjustments, and improvements as feasible.
• Partners with the engineering team to contribute, prioritize, and deliver on the roadmap for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service).
• Understands the value proposition for the multiple feature areas and answers technical questions on the multiple feature areas they own.
• Validates use-case and scenario outcomes, and performance targets that are being achieved.
• Drives continuous quality improvements of the delivery. Writes readable and extensible test cases from scratch to test code and improve quality.

Product/Service Performance:

• Acts as a technical advisor to educate and evangelize the feature areas (e.g., product, service) they work on with customers via meetings, presentations, and other forums.
• Leads direct customer (internal and/or external) engagements to solicit feedback and understand their experiences with the feature areas (e.g., product, program, services).
• Helps deliver sales enablement and field support. Participates in business deals, creates strategic partnerships, and participates in pre-sales meetings with customers.
• Leads teams to partner with others (e.g., Data Science, Software and Hardware Engineering) to collect performance metrics (e.g., Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] such as usage, quality, speed, and cost), monitor and report on progress (e.g., business reviews), and derive deep insights that lead to productive courses of action to improve development, iteration, and implementation of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service).
• Leverages customer listening systems, telemetry, engagements (e.g., interviews, surveys), etc., to develop insights on product and/or service performance and customer needs.
• Shares insights with Engineering and other partners. Forms hypotheses to complex technical needs, performs experiments, and iterates to drive improvement in specific performance metrics.
• Drives the customer supportability experience and provides documentation (e.g., troubleshooting guidelines, best practices, blogs).
• Monitors how products and/or services are being used; tracks and understands a root-cause analysis for live-site incidents with little guidance from others.
• Understands and drives improvements in the support process, including both forums and communities.
• Collaborates with and provides insight to Software and Hardware Engineering, Customer Service and Support (CSS), and other partners (e.g., business-process owners) on broad live-site improvement opportunities.