Overview

It is a time of extraordinary change in the AI landscape, and this role puts you at the heart of it. Microsoft AI (MAI) uses AI responsibly to make everyone more informed, capable, and supported, and the team you will support is hiring the top 5% of AI talent in one of the most competitive markets in the world. You will join a small, senior team that moves at startup speed inside a global company, where the quality of our thinking and the pace of our execution both have to be exceptional.

As a Program Manager for MAI HR Recruiting, you will own the programs that keep our hiring engine moving and act as a trusted partner to the team running it & HR leaders running it. You will help set priorities when everything feels urgent, keep multiple workstreams aligned to what matters most, and create structure and clarity where it is most needed. This opportunity will allow you to build deep expertise in how a frontier AI lab scales its talent function, sharpen your executive communication with Directors and senior leaders, and grow your influence across a global, highly matrixed organisation.

You are a great fit for this role if you:

• Move with a genuine sense of urgency, and are energised rather than unsettled by a landscape that shifts week to week.
• Are comfortable with ambiguity, and instinctively organise, sequence, and create clarity for the people around you.
• Hold both the program view and the people view, moving between a delivery plan and a sensitive talent conversation in the same day.
• Communicate with precision, and can walk a Director through status, blockers, and the decision you need in five minutes or less.
• Build trust quickly across recruiting, the business, HR to drive work forward at speed.
• Bring a positive, forward-thinking mindset and raise the energy of the team you are part of.
• Let data drive your decisions and direction, and turn it into a clear story of the organisation's impact.

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

Program and Project Leadership

• Own the end-to-end delivery of MAI Recruiting programs, from intake and scoping through launch, measurement, and iteration.
• Strategically prioritize a portfolio of competing workstreams, making explicit trade-off recommendations when time, capacity, or headcount are constrained.
• Keep programs aligned to hiring goals and business strategy, maintaining a single source of truth for scope, milestones, owners, risks, and dependencies.
• Identify blockers early, drive them to resolution with the right owner, and escalate with a recommendation rather than a question.
• Build the operating rhythm for the team, including planning cadence, reviews, dashboards, and documentation, so that speed never comes at the cost of quality.

Communication and Stakeholder Leadership

• Deliver clear, consistent updates to Directors and senior leaders covering status, risks, blockers, and decisions required, always with a recommended path forward.
• Work cross-collaboratively across recruiting, sourcing, coordination, finance, and HR to move shared work forward at pace.
• Represent the voice of the team upward and the voice of leadership downward, so that context and decisions travel in both directions.

Other

Embody our culture and values

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 4+ years experience in program management, process management, or process improvement OR equivalent experience.
• 2+ years management (e.g., people, project, process, vendor, change) experience.

Additional or preferred qualifications

• Master's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 6+ years experience in program management, process management, or process improvement OR Bachelor's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 8+ years experience in program management, process management, or process improvement OR equivalent experience.
• 4+ years people management experience.
• Experience as an Operational Partner to recruiting, engineering, or research teams within a global, matrixed organization.
• Track record of building programs and operating rhythms from scratch in ambiguous, fast-changing environments.
• Fluency with recruiting and people systems, and comfort using data and AI tooling to simplify and scale manual processes.

Business Program Management M4

The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $97,600 - $188,400 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 $125,000 - $206,400 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.