Business Program Manager

Overview

MCAPS-Core accelerates customer outcomes and business growth. By uniting product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners around a common customer mission, we help customers realize value faster and turn innovation into measurable business impact. Through deep technical expertise and differentiated go-to-market execution, we win competitively, capture market share, and scale repeatable growth motions. We differentiate through value creation - delivering world-class, AI-powered customer experiences that accelerate adoption, strengthen loyalty, and create sustainable competitive advantage, driving growth that outpaces the market.

Within MCAPS - Core, the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization builds trust and confidence for every person and organization through delivering a seamless support experience. In CSS, we are powered by Microsoft's AI technology to help consumers, businesses, partners, and more, resolve their issues quickly and securely, helping prevent future problems from occurring and achieving more from their Microsoft investment.

Strategy & Operations (S&O) serves as a cross-business unit within CSS, enabling strategic planning, governance, business performance, operational execution, and transformation across the organization. By aligning priorities, investments, AI and technology initiatives, and execution, we help CSS achieve its business objectives and deliver greater customer impact.

The Business Program Manager and planning direction, this role independently leads complex cross-functional planning workstreams, brings structure to ambiguous problems, and ensures that financial, capacity, operational, and execution dependencies are visible in planning decisions.

The role owns the planning integration approach and the planning portions of key plans of record, including DFD documents and related planning artifacts. It establishes consistent methods for documenting measures of success, financial levers, potential financial scope, assumptions, decision workflows, dependencies, risks, and operational implications. The role works closely with peers leading Business Impact / LRP and AI Planning Impact and incorporates relevant Support Operations work, including skills-based routing, scheduling, capacity planning, and related operational changes.

Success requires strong planning and operational judgment, the ability to synthesize information across disconnected workstreams, and the credibility to influence senior stakeholders without direct authority. The role is expected to recommend practical tradeoffs, identify risks early, and improve the mechanisms through which planning teams coordinate and make decisions. Principal planning leads and CSS leadership retain accountability for organization-wide strategy, investment direction, and final enterprise tradeoff decisions.

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.

Responsibilities

Lead the integration of assigned annual planning workstreams across CSS Planning, Strategy, PCMO, Support Operations, Business Operations, and other partner teams.

Translate established CSS priorities into coordinated workplans, milestones, decision points, dependencies, and planning deliverables.

Own the planning portions of DFD documents and plans of record, including success measures, financial scope and levers, assumptions, risks, dependencies, operational implications, and accountable owners.

Integrate Support Operations considerations-including skills-based routing, scheduling, capacity, and workforce planning-into planning artifacts and decisions.

Partner with Business Impact / LRP and AI Planning Impact leads to align assumptions, timing, dependencies, measures, and updates across related workstreams.

Structure ambiguous planning problems, identify gaps and tradeoffs, and develop decision-ready recommendations and leadership updates.

Establish reusable planning mechanisms, standards, decision workflows, and operating rhythms that improve clarity, consistency, and execution readiness.

Drive cross-functional alignment, secure stakeholder commitments, and proactively manage risks, escalations, and assigned outcomes.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelors Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 6+ years experience in program management, process management, or process improvement 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.

Additional or preferred qualifications

• Masters Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 8+ years experience in program management, process management, or process improvement OR Bachelors Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 12+ years experience in program management, process management, or process improvement OR equivalent experience.
• Demonstrated experience independently leading complex cross-functional programs or planning initiatives from problem definition through measurable outcomes.
• Experience structuring ambiguous problems, evaluating tradeoffs, and recommending a practical path forward with limited oversight.
• Experience influencing across organizational boundaries, securing commitments, and managing dependencies and risks without direct authority.
• Strong understanding of annual planning, plan-of-record management, and the connection between business priorities, financial levers, operational implications, and execution requirements.
• Strong synthesis and communication skills, including experience creating clear, executive-ready recommendations and decision materials.
• Experience establishing reusable planning processes, templates, or operating rhythms that improve effectiveness across teams.
• Experience with customer support, skills-based routing, scheduling, capacity planning, workforce planning, or large-scale support operations.
• Experience integrating financial, workforce, operational, AI, or technology considerations into planning and using data or AI-enabled tools to improve decision support.

Business Program Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $116,900 - $203,600 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 $148,400 - $222,600 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.