Principal Product Manager

Overview

AI agents are only as useful as the context and capabilities they can access. Work IQ connects agents to workplace knowledge and actions across Microsoft 365 and connected systems through a consistent, governed interface.

We are looking for a Principal Product Manager to lead the strategy, roadmap, and end-to-end execution for the platform underlying Work IQ MCP (Model Context Protocol) and its provider ecosystem, with an emphasis on retrieval and its connection to federated MCP servers. You will shape how agents discover and retrieve relevant evidence across indexed content and live sources, and how providers bring capabilities into Work IQ while supporting domain fidelity, security, reliability, and performance.

This is a deeply technical, cross-organizational individual contributor role. You will operate autonomously through ambiguity across evolving product areas, balancing long-term strategy with hands-on execution through delivery, adoption, and continuous improvement. You will translate complex and evolving product, architecture, customer, and ecosystem needs into clear decisions and executable plans. You will lead through influence across organizational boundaries, delegating and coordinating work through teams and individuals outside your direct reporting structure while driving follow-through on commitments and maintaining end-to-end accountability for product outcomes.

You will also work directly with customers, developers, partners, and consuming teams to understand their scenarios and translate feedback into platform improvements that benefit multiple consumers.

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

Set platform direction and drive execution. Own and evolve the strategy and prioritized roadmap for Work IQ’s shared platform and provider ecosystem, translating customer, developer, and business needs into scalable capabilities and clear investment priorities while driving execution through delivery, adoption, and continuous improvement.

Lead retrieval as a product. Define product requirements and success measures for relevance, source coverage, freshness, citations, provenance, and structured evidence used by consuming agents.

Shape retrieval and federation experiences. Partner with engineering and applied science to define how indexed retrieval and live federated sources work together, including source selection, result normalization, ranking, latency, reliability, and partial-failure experiences.

Connect retrieval to downstream experiences. Establish requirements for source references, discovery, and integration patterns that enable agents to move reliably from retrieved evidence to authorized fetches or actions.

Build a scalable provider ecosystem. Define provider onboarding, capability and schema discovery, compatibility expectations, lifecycle management, and readiness requirements that support reusable platform experiences.

Make enterprise trust and operability foundational. Partner with engineering, security, and governance teams to define requirements related to identity, authorization, tenant policy, auditability, observability, reliability, and controlled rollout.

Lead through influence across organizational boundaries. Delegate and coordinate work across provider, consumer, product, and engineering teams and individuals outside your direct reporting structure. Navigate competing requirements and dependencies, drive follow-through on commitments, and maintain end-to-end accountability for product outcomes, including work outside your own organization.

Engage directly with customers, developers, and partners. Understand scenarios, evaluate product and integration experiences, answer product questions, gather feedback, and translate recurring insights into scalable product improvements.

Measure and improve product outcomes. Use telemetry, evaluations, customer insights, and production evidence to improve retrieval quality, adoption, reliability, performance, and cost.

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development

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.

Preferred Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree AND 12+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development

OR equivalent experience.

Experience leading technical platform, API, search, data, developer, SaaS, or PaaS products from product definition through delivery, production adoption, and continuous improvement.

Experience leading through influence across organizational boundaries, delegating or coordinating work and dependencies across teams while maintaining accountability for end-to-end product outcomes.

Experience operating autonomously through ambiguity across evolving product areas and translating complex customer, technical, and business needs into product decisions, prioritized roadmaps, and executable requirements.

Experience engaging directly with customers, developers, or partners to understand scenarios and translate feedback into scalable product improvements.

Experience making product decisions involving APIs, distributed systems, identity and authorization, service reliability, or comparable technical platform considerations.

Experience defining or evaluating search, retrieval, data, or information-access experiences and making tradeoffs involving quality, coverage, freshness, latency, reliability, or cost.

Experience using telemetry, customer insights, experiments, evaluations, or other qualitative and quantitative evidence to guide product decisions and measure outcomes.

Experience or familiarity with one or more relevant areas, such as enterprise search, retrieval or retrieval-augmented generation, AI/LLM-based agents, MCP or similar integration protocols, federated data access, developer platforms, or provider ecosystems. Direct MCP or AI-agent product experience is preferred but not required.

Product Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 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.

Insights from previous hires

Top skills: Adoption, Analytics, Business, Marketing, Customer Service, Clarity, Business Development, Automation, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Marketing Communications

Common previous titles: Digital Specialist, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Director Strategy, Manager Marketing, Technical Program Manager II, Senior Technical Program Manager, Senior Strategist, Senior Security Researcher, Engineer Senior