Principal PM (Product Management) Architect

How would you like to directly affect the lives of billions of humans? Microsoft Developer Center Norway is growing. We are looking for a Product Management Architect with a strong passion for understanding user behavior and producing great experiences. Come join our team!    

Who we are    

Microsoft Developer Center Norway (MDCN), with offices in Oslo, Trondheim and Tromsø, is part of the Experiences & Devices group within Microsoft. We work on integrating and building intelligent experiences across Office 365 via cloud services such as Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype and Microsoft Teams. Their implementation ranks among the world’s largest and most cutting-edge distributed systems spanning hundreds of data centers around the world. Our products are used by most Fortune 500 enterprises, key government organizations, thousands of non-profits and 100s of millions of consumers across the world.   

To deliver on our mission to empower people and organizations to achieve more, we need to leverage data to inform decision making, optimize outcomes and produce innovative solutions and are seeking a skilled Product Management Architect. The position is full-time and based in our Oslo office.

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.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree proven years experience in product/service/project/program management or software development OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree and proven years experience in product/service/project/program management or software development OR equivalent experience.

Analysis of Customer and Market Signals

• Anticipates customers’ unmet or unknown needs and market opportunities for enhancements or development and new products/services of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries via quantitative (e.g., usage, telemetry) and qualitative analyses (e.g., customer usage, various listening systems, feedback channels of market and industry trends), looks for patterns in the data across a portfolio, and scopes the impact and prioritization of a problem.
• Brings together internal and external customer groups around a specific scenario and engages in direct 1:1 (e.g., visits, interviews) or many (e.g., social media, events) customer engagements to solicit feedback and understand their experiences with Microsoft’s products and services using industry-accepted methods (e.g., Moneyball).
• Acts as a subject matter expert in performing market or user research in collaboration with the User Research team, conducting competitive analyses, and examining market and industry trends, as well as industry-specific requirements or regulations.
• Shares insights with senior internal/external stakeholders and internal team to ensure cross-team alignment. Leads contract negotiations and partnerships across the organization and company-wide alignment. Assesses acquisition targets to enhance the migration offering.
• Demonstrates and builds experiences across multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries.
• Leads process defining problems and incubating solutions for a team or organization. Understands the broader ecosystem of Microsoft products and where to leverage capabilities and functionalities across the ecosystem.
• Coaches and mentors internal team to develop problem statements and forms hypotheses of new feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries to address highly complex customer needs and/or market opportunities; identifies dependencies of other feature areas.
• Performs experiments to test hypotheses and inform decisions on what new feature areas (e.g., product, service) to introduce across divisional boundaries.
• Establishes clarity of patterns of root problem and how it relates with previously seen trends across customers, determines the customers/sectors impacted, foresees future opportunities, and uses research evidence to influence feature prioritization.
• Ensures alignment between the customer, the market, internal stakeholders, senior leadership, and the goals and strategy of Microsoft.
• Collaborates with others (e.g., Software Engineering [SWE], Hardware Engineering [HWE], Product Marketing, Design) to ensure that they can satisfy customer requirements.
• Validates the market size, explores new opportunities to determine products or features of greatest value, and collaborates with other teams (e.g., Finance) to build the Long Range Plan (LRP).
• Defines solution options across multiple feature areas across divisional boundaries (e.g., product, service).
• Partners with SWE, HWE, and senior colleagues on other teams in refinement sessions to synthesize hypothesis results into solutions tied with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) progress.
• Resolves alignment issues, contributes to portfolio level solutions, and drives cross-functional clarity with senior leadership.

Product/Service Definition

• Works across multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Defines or influences the long-term vision and strategy for the feature areas based on a deep understanding of customer needs, market and user research, the competitive landscape, and Microsoft’s business goals and strategy. Writes the product framing memo or strategy documents and reviews with senior leaders. Distills the vision and strategy into a product roadmap. Creates user stories and epics to convey the big picture. Leverages a deep understanding of the product architecture to design integrated scenarios. Collaborates with others (e.g., Business Planning, Finance, Support, Customers, Product Marketing) to identify the potential customer base. Communicates product strategy to internal and external customers and builds consensus through multiple methods (e.g., conference presentations, collaboration with partner organizations).
• Defines and evangelizes others around driving significant business impact across the organization and tracking success criteria and performance metrics (e.g., Objectives and Key Results [OKRs], Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] such as engagement, usage, acquisition, revenue, profitability, and in-project features) and provides clarity on the fundamentals (e.g., quality, privacy, security, compliance, accessibility, cost of goods sold [COGS]) of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Works with Software Engineering (SWE) and Hardware Engineering (HWE) to identify needed data and ensure needed telemetry is developed and obtains it responsibly and compliantly; reports and explicates reasons for outcomes and drives decision making thereafter. Deeply understands the COGS of multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries and the KPIs that will help improve profitability. Performs advanced insights analyses (e.g., customer acquisition, customer retention). Identifies OKRs for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries and ensures alignment of the product with organization-level OKRs. Determines the value of the multiple feature areas to the business, aligns success criteria, and measures success.
• Serves as an expert in identifying data-informed, long-term or overall solution-level investment opportunities, evaluating tradeoffs, and prioritizing investments in consultation with cross organizational partners for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Guides others to determine the features or experiences to prioritize in the roadmap that will support achievement of success criteria and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
• Influences and drives engagement with cross-functional internal partnerships, external partners, including early adopting customers, senior leadership, and other key stakeholders to gather input and garner support for product/service vision, strategy, and roadmap for multiple feature areas across divisional boundaries. Provides thought leadership and is sought out to address questions and challenges from group managers and other leaders. Rallies the team around a common vision. Collaborates to gain buy in and alignment. Secures buy in from senior leadership for product vision and strategy for multiple feature areas across organizational boundaries. Advocates for priorities and resources needed to deliver desired outcomes for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries. Partners to rally others around shared priorities. Balances listening and sharing of information to obtain alignment.

Product/Service Development

• Defines the feature set and partners with Design teams to connect multiple design factors (e.g., visual design, user experience [UX], application programming interfaces [APIs], hardware design) to desired functionality and product vision. Iterates multiple designs with Design, Software Engineering (SWE), and Hardware Engineering (HWE). Leverages preexisting design patterns to inform current design iterations and establish a cohesive design approach. Explores and advocates for ways that preexisting and current designs within product areas can have a broader impact for multiple parties (e.g., Microsoft, external/internal customers). Anticipates, reviews, and helps resolve interoperability challenges between different components or layers in the stack (e.g., UX and API layer differences). Develops strategy for designs in the related areas. Facilitates senior-level reviews (e.g., UX, system designs, data designs) with customers (e.g., regulators, engineers, policy makers, business-decision makers) to determine usability and ensure accessibility criteria and updated designs meet customer goals.
• Owns and drives the roadmap for the multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) they own across divisional boundaries. Prioritizes the backlog, works with Software Engineering (SWE) and Hardware Engineering (HWE) to align on tradeoffs for the multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) they own across divisional boundaries, partners with Product Marketing on the disclosure of the roadmap, and ensures dependencies are identified and accounted for. Takes in new inputs and adapts as necessary. Influences and lands difficult tradeoffs with peers and manage the team through it. Drives direction between customer needs and what is developed on the roadmap so that a series of problems can be addressed over time. Ensures alignment between the roadmap for the multiple features (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries and Objective and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
• Collaborates with partner team to build golden configurations and leads scenario walkthroughs and thought exercises to identify problems, system friction, and needed contingencies in advance of early customer adoption for multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across organizational boundaries. Provides test demonstrations to leadership team around product/service areas. Shares feature previews or roadmap with customers to drive engagement and to gather feedback and customer telemetry in conjunction with others (e.g., Business Development, Sales, End Consumers, User Research). Collaborates with Software Engineering (SWE), Hardware Engineering (HWE), and Scientists to synthesize, prioritize, and address feedback for improvement.
• Collaborates with Product Marketing, Business Planning, and Engineering to identify product release criteria, customer acquisition, usage, retention, and monetization strategies. Helps scale Product Marketing teams by building marketing and roll-out plans and/or content such as product overviews, blogs, and landing pages for individual features or smaller products that ladder up to marketing plans for an overall product solution area. Creates and drives strategy for taking the multiple feature areas (e.g., product, service) across divisional boundaries from private preview to public preview and then to general availability. Begins to orchestrate the creation of customer support plans (e.g., frequently asked questions [FAQs], scripts), HyperCase, change management, and communication plans.
• Executes on major opportunities to evangelize the feature areas s/he works on with internal and external stakeholders, partners, analysts, and customers in the industry via presentations, blog posts, social media, and other forums. Presents at Executive Briefing Centers (EBCs) and large industry/company events. Acts as a primary interface and collaborates with Product Marketing to educate on the product and develop content.

Product/Service Performance

• Provides expertise to partner with others (e.g., Data Science, Software Engineering [SWE], Hardware Engineering [HWE], User Research) to collect performance metrics (e.g., key performance indicators [KPIs] such as engagement, usage, acquisition, revenue, and in-project features), monitor and report on progress (e.g., business reviews), and derive deep insights and drives productive courses of action across teams to improve product/feature development, iteration, and implementation. Leverages customer listening systems, telemetry, engagements (e.g., interviews, surveys), etc., to develop insights on product performance and customer needs. Shares insights with SWE, HWE, and other partners. Forms hypotheses to complex technical needs, performs experiments, iterates, and tests to drive improvement/adoption in specific performance metrics that have broad impact on multiple areas.
• Identifies features to deprecate. Develops, articulates, and presents reasoning and tradeoffs involved in deprecations. Helps drive the deprecation process. Works with Public Relations/Product Marketing on messaging to customers. Communicates change accurately. Drives next steps for customer transition. Identifies means failing to meet business demand.
• Builds trust with a targeted selection of customers across sectors. Orchestrates a line of communication with complex and advanced customers to capture feedback and insights through the product development lifecycle. Ensures the vision is aligned with customer goals. Leads customer communities and customer engagement programs. Responds to real-time customer feedback in online portals. Understands and drives improvements in the support process, including both forums and communities.