Principal Technical Program Manager

Quick Facts

Principal-level Technical Program Manager role focused on partnership operations for the Microsoft–OpenAI collaboration.

Primary focus: building the operating model, ensuring execution accountability, and enabling leadership decision support across complex cross-company work.

Description

Lead the operating system for the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership by creating structure across hundreds of moving parts, maintaining full partnership context, and driving commitments to resolution. Provide senior leaders with a clear, current, decision-oriented view and translate strategic priorities into executable partnership initiatives. Coordinate across product, engineering, research, infrastructure, safety, security, legal, business, and executive stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead partnership operations: own and continuously improve the operating model; establish operating rhythms, governance, communication channels, and decision processes; identify friction and drive improvements.
• Maintain full partnership context: track priorities, commitments, risks, opportunities, and unmet needs; connect context across technical and business functions; identify cross-workstream dependencies and emerging issues.
• Drive execution and accountability: translate priorities into plans with owners, milestones, dependencies, and outcomes; ensure commitments are followed through; identify blockers when work stalls and drive resolution; hold stakeholders accountable across boundaries.
• Apply strategic judgment: align day-to-day execution with broader partnership objectives and long-term AI strategy; recommend changes to priorities, operating models, sequencing, and stakeholder engagement; anticipate downstream risks and second-order effects.
• Provide leadership visibility and decision support: synthesize complex information into concise, decision-oriented updates; prepare leadership for key reviews and OpenAI discussions; surface unresolved decisions and emerging risks early.
• Launch new partnership initiatives: define objectives, outcomes, scope, stakeholders, dependencies, ownership model, and success criteria; set up initial governance and execution plans; guide concept-to-execution and transition mature work to long-term owners.
• Coordinate across Microsoft and OpenAI: build trusted relationships across leaders and teams; facilitate difficult discussions to reach clear decisions; represent Microsoft priorities and context in operational discussions.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree.
• 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development (or equivalent).
• Preferred: 12+ years experience in the same areas (or equivalent).
• Cross-functional/cross-team project management experience (8+ years preferred; 3+ years mentioned).
• 1+ year of experience reading and/or writing code (e.g., documentation or product demos).
• Extensive experience leading complex, cross-functional technical programs or strategic operations.
• Demonstrated ability to create structure and drive execution in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
• Strong strategic judgment and ability to connect operational decisions to broader business and technology objectives.
• Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries and drive accountability without direct authority.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills for advising senior leaders and synthesizing complex information.
• Familiarity with AI development, cloud platforms, infrastructure, product commercialization, or emerging technologies.
• Experience supporting a major technology partnership or cross-company initiative, including coordinating with external partners.