Data Center: Technical Program Manager, EMEA

Microsoft’s Cloud Operations & Innovation (CO+I) is the engine that powers our cloud services. As a CO+I Regional Datacenter Break/Fix Program Manager, you will perform a key role in delivering the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft’s online services including Bing, Office 365, Xbox, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform. As a group, CO+I is focused on the personal and professional development of all employees and offers trainings and opportunities including Career Rotation Programs, Diversity & Inclusion trainings and events, and professional certifications.

Our infrastructure is comprised of a large global portfolio of more than 200 Data Centers in 32 countries and millions of servers. Our foundation is built upon and managed by a team of subject matter experts working to support services for more than 1 billion customers and 20 million businesses in over 90 countries worldwide.

As a Technical Program Manager in DCOPs you will join a fast growing organization and contribute to the overall execution of strategy and program delivery. This role will provide opportunity to work with regional leaders and the extended leadership team and for you to develop deep program execution skills, business acumen, and hone your influencing and stakeholder management skills.

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

Analysis of Customer, Market and Business Signals

• Identifies highly complex opportunities and gaps in the implementation of the DCOPS services. Acts as a subject matter expert in performing highly complex research in collaboration with other teams both within and outside DCOPS to build a plan to have an impact on our service offering .

• Demonstrates and builds experiences across multiple groups or divisions. Coaches internal team to develop problem statements and form hypotheses of multiple service areas across divisional boundaries to address highly complex business, program, and customer needs

• Owns and performs experiments to test hypotheses and inform decisions on operational service across divisional boundaries. Establishes clarity of patterns of root problem and how it relates with previously seen trends; determines the customers/services impacted, and uses research evidence to influence program prioritization.

• Collaborates with others (broader CO+I and Microsoft partner teams ) to ensure that they can satisfy stratgic objectives.

Operational Service Definition

• Reviews change proposals and design, and may provide approvals. Understands what options are available and leads others to identify and select best option for needs, and creates new solutions if needed.

• Defines success criteria and performance metrics (e.g., Objectives and Key Results [OKRs], Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] such as quality and performance) for change initiaitives.

• Mentors others on how to define success and performance metrics. Deeply understands the return on investment and presents it to senior leadership.

• Defines the program(s) goals and prioritization for the operational processes. Translates the needs of the organization and other teams into program goals and prioritized deliverables based on data insights.

• Provides solutions or recommendations to the GM and other key stakeholders to make complex decisions based on data-driven identified risks and tradeoffs.

Operational Service Development

• Validates use-case and scenario outcomes, and performance targets that are being achieved. Drives continuous quality improvements for DCOPs.

• Creates relationships to drive orchestration and integration efforts for the design and implementation process for large and highly complex cross functional projects with internal teams and external partners.

• Influences leadership on objectives. Collaborates and coordinates across the business to ensure alignment and gain buy in on change management, including tradeoffs, adjustments, and improvements as feasible.

• Tracks, coordinates, and communicates end-to-end project schedules across divisional boundaries.

• Establishes and monitors processes, and drives accountability with stakeholders for following the established schedule and processes.

• Tracks and manages dependencies to enable cohesive, connected alignment across teams and to identify potential risk areas and escalate appropriately. Makes adjustments or course corrections when projects are not aligned to schedules or goals.

• Partners with DCOPS and CO+I teams to contribute, prioritize, and deliver on the roadmap for multiple change initiatives across divisional boundaries.

• Understands the value proposition for the change initiatives and justifies capacity requirements and advocates for the right resource allocation.

• Leads governance programs and processes to ensure that specific performance requirements and standards are met throughout the project delivery lifecycle.

• Drives the development of the staging and implementation plan for piloting and mobilising change in alignment with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for DCOPS

Operational Service Performance

• Supports the regional teams in monitoring how services are performing

• Understands and drives improvements in the operational support process, including both forums and communities. Collaborates with and provides deep insight to internal teams and other Microsoft Partner teams on improvement opportunities.

• Acts as a technical advisor to educate and evangelize for service improvement via meetings, excellent commuications, presentations, briefing decks and other forums.

• Acts a single point of contact to partner with others (e.g., other Partner Teams) to collect performance metrics (e.g., Key Performance Indicators [KPIs], monitor and report on progress (e.g., business reviews), and derive deep insights that lead to productive courses of action to improve DCOPS service and partnerships

• Leverages customer and staff listening systems, engagements (e.g., interviews, surveys), etc., to develop insights on service performance and customer needs. Shares insights with GM, the DCOPS leadership teams and other partners.

Skills and Experience

• Agility: Ability to think, understand, and process information quickly.

• Analytic Problem Solving: The ability to use both facts and logic to develop resolutions. This includes extrapolating beyond mere opinions to resolve challenges.

• Conflict Resolution: The ability to manage conflict, disharmony, and strife among people and situations, while recognizing and addressing sensitivities.

• Creativity: The ability to apply ingenuity, inventiveness, and imagination to the inclusive design and construction of a product, service, program, or initiative.

• Cross-Functional Team Leadership: The ability to lead and manage individuals and teams across various business functions and unite them to achieve shared goals.

• Data Analysis: The ability to systematically gather information from a variety of sources, analyze information, identify implications of data, draw conclusions, generate alternatives and solutions, and evaluate the consequences of choosing each alternative. This includes the ability to convert general data and findings into applied, specific information and suggestions that add value to business planning and strategies.

• Decision Making: The ability to make decisions in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment. This includes the ability to define, diagnose, and determine an appropriate resolution, recommendation, or decision while considering alternatives and factors (e.g., resources, costs, tradeoffs).

• Dependency management: This ability to identify and describe the dependencies in relationships within and across systems.

• Influence Others: The ability to garner support for initiatives by gaining the respect of others and inspiring trust and confidence.

• Judgement: The ability to compare, contrast, and analyze data, people, situations, etc. to formulate a valid conclusion.

• Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Application:Knowledge of different types of measurable indicators and success metrics, which includes an understanding of how indicators can be used to demonstrate the achievement of outcomes, outputs, goals, or objectives. This includes the ability to effectively apply this knowledge to a project in the form of creating, selecting, monitoring, and measuring appropriate indicators.

• Negotiation The ability to achieve mutually satisfying agreements in negotiations with others by listening to their objectives, acting as the company’s representative to effectively communicate the company’s objective, and seeking common ground and collaborative solutions.

• Program Management: Knowledge of and the ability to administer and manage various programs used throughout the company, including resolving issues and answering relevant queries.

• Project Management.Knowledge of and the ability to carry out the process of planning, organizing, and managing tasks and resources to accomplish a well-defined objective. This includes the ability to manage and provide project deliverables, optimize the contribution of the people involved, and assess the impact of project decisions on quality, productivity, schedules, cost, performance, etc.

• Project Visioning. The ability to create effective and forward-thinking strategies and action plans for both long-term and short-term projects. This includes the ability to engage others to commit to the vision by communicating specific goals and objectives.

• Quality Assurance Knowledge of and the ability to follow systematic and continuing processes of checking to see whether a process is meeting specified requirements. This includes knowledge of quality measurements and defined standards.

• Risk Management. Knowledge of Risk Management, the process of measuring, or assessing risk and then developing strategies to manage the risk. This may include the ability to identify or develop strategies to transfer the risk to another party, avoid the risk, reduce the negative effect of the risk, and accept some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.

• Stakeholder Management. The ability to manage project stakeholders and stakeholder engagements. This includes identifying stakeholders, prioritizing their concerns, managing expectations, and planning and monitoring stakeholder engagements.

• Strategic Thinking. The ability to examine and understand DCOPs competitive strengths and weaknesses. This includes the ability to: look for opportunities to grow the business and reduce costs; monitor the environment for opportunities; formulate strategies that provide distinct competitive advantages; and consider problems and opportunities from a broad, multi-functional perspective.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Extensive experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

• Bachelor’s Degree AND extensive experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.

• Experience of change management in a matrix organsation

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.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .