Principal Expansion Strategy PM Lead

Overview

Microsoft’s Cloud Operations + Innovation (CO+I) organization is the team behind the cloud, enabling the infrastructure that powers Microsoft’s cloud and AI services. Within Integrated Planning and Execution (IPE), the Region Expansion function helps shape where and how that infrastructure grows, connecting long-term business ambitions and customer needs with infrastructure readiness and supply opportunities. We bring together expertise across engineering, finance, planning, and infrastructure acquisition to anticipate constraints, explore creative expansion options, and guide decisions across land, power, network, and datacenter capacity. Through collaborative leadership, data-driven analysis, and disciplined program management, we turn strategy into actionable regional roadmaps—preserving flexibility, reducing risk, and positioning Microsoft to deliver capacity where and when it matters.

As a Principal Expansion Strategy Program Management Lead, you will have the opportunity to shape the future of Microsoft’s commercial cloud and AI infrastructure strategy while leading and developing a team of senior program managers who advance that strategy. Bringing together your experience in infrastructure, supply planning, and business strategy, you will guide a long-range portfolio that balances new-region opportunities with the expansion of existing regions and availability zones. This work calls for curiosity, creative problem solving, and the ability to turn complex market needs, demand and supply outlooks, infrastructure constraints, and investment choices into clear recommendations and timely decisions. Just as importantly, it calls for a genuine passion for people leadership: coaching with empathy, creating an inclusive environment, and helping each team member grow while building shared accountability for outcomes. You will represent the Americas portfolio in executive forums, act with urgency and sound judgment, and model a growth mindset through feedback, learning, and continuous improvement. You will also help evolve how we work, embracing AI-enabled tools and new program management approaches with responsible data handling and thoughtful validation. This is an opportunity to make a lasting impact—building a capable, connected team and translating ambitious expansion strategies into plans that are ready for execution.

Help shape where, when, and how Microsoft expands its global cloud and AI infrastructure. As a Principal Global Expansion Strategy PM leader, you will own complex expansion strategy problem spaces, translating long-range commercial and cloud needs into geographical growth strategies and investment choices. Your work will connect a 3–10+ year planning horizon with the decisions needed today to preserve future capacity, resilience, and speed to market.

This is a manager role with no end-to-end accountability for a specific geography - but a part of a central tiger team leading strategic projects for our expansion business. You will own the strategy, analytical approach, and decision framework for assigned expansion problem spaces, drawing on infrastructure, supply planning, and business strategy experience. You will act with urgency and sound judgment, creatively solve ambiguous problems, and lead through empathy, inclusive collaboration, mentoring, and influence. You will lead central and global expansion strategy development for infrastructure - collaborating highly with our design, engineering, finance, planning and regional partners. A growth mindset and eagerness to adopt and evolve AI-enabled program management processes will help you turn learning into scalable practices and partner with planning and delivery teams to translate decisions into actionable plans.

Responsibilities

• Own research and refinement of global geographical growth strategies, framing the strategic questions, scenarios, trade-offs, and recommendations that inform long-range cloud, commercial, and AI expansion.
• Synthesize demand and supply variances with physical infrastructure, geopolitical and economic conditions, customer needs, technology changes, and time-to-market constraints. Creatively solve ambiguous infrastructure and supply planning problems by testing alternatives and making trade-offs explicit to identify expansion priorities and preserve strategic optionality.
• Partner with Finance, Land, Lease and Engineering partners to develop investment business cases that make capacity, timing, risk, and economic trade-offs explicit and support informed executive decisions.
• Connect strategy to regional planning tools and the plan of record (POR), working with Azure, engineering, planning, regional delivery, land, power, network, and leasing partners to align dependencies and implementation choices.
• Shape ahead-of-demand readiness strategies for land, power, permitting, network, and schedule constraints. Use critical-path and risk insights from prepositioning and delivery programs to improve strategic choices, not just track execution. Act with urgency and sound judgment: proactively unblock decisions by clarifying owners, escalating time-sensitive risks, and presenting actionable mitigation options.
• Lead virtual PM collaboration and strategic governance with empathy: listen to differing perspectives, invite inclusive participation, and resolve cross-functional disagreements through clear options and recommendations. Gain decision alignment with GM, VP, and CVP stakeholders and communicate rationale, risks, and implications. Mentor and develop others through knowledge sharing and constructive feedback. Seek feedback, learn from outcomes, and adapt approaches as conditions change.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
• 3+ years people management experience.
• 6+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

Background Check 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

• 8+ years of cross-functional program or product management experience, bringing multiple disciplines together to deliver complex business outcomes.
• Infrastructure experience, supply planning experience, and business strategy experience, with the ability to connect capacity constraints, demand outlooks, and investment choices into actionable plans.
• 8+ years of experience using data and analysis to inform strategy, investment choices, or operational decisions. Eagerness to experiment with, adopt, and evolve program management processes using AI tools, with responsible data handling, validation of outputs, and human judgment.
• 8+ years of leadership in a business-critical function, with accountability for priorities, stakeholder alignment, and outcomes. Demonstrated urgency with sound judgment and proactive blocker removal, creative problem solving under ambiguity, and a growth mindset shown through seeking feedback, learning, and adapting.
• 3+ years managing program management teams. Demonstrated passion for managing and developing people through empathetic coaching, clear expectations, effective delegation, growth opportunities, and team accountability, while fostering an inclusive culture and collaborating across organizational boundaries.
• 10+ years of program management experience in mission-critical infrastructure, with experience in cloud-infrastructure planning.
• Experience shaping long-range geographical growth strategies or infrastructure investment choices, including scenario analysis, business cases, and executive decision support.
• Experience connecting expansion strategy to regional planning and POR governance, including capacity readiness, critical-path constraints, mitigation options, and planning data tools.

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Technical Program Management M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $165,600 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 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.