The posting
Overview
The Office of the CTO (OCTO) is where Microsoft takes on some of its hardest and most forward-looking technical challenges. We work across research, engineering, product, and business organizations to tackle some of the company’s most important and complex technical opportunities and partnerships. OCTO is a small, high-leverage organization where priorities move quickly, problems are often ambiguous, and success requires good judgment, adaptability, the ability to influence across boundaries, and the persistence to move complex work forward. We’re looking for people who bring curiosity, technical confidence, and a bias toward action, and who are energized by turning ambitious ideas into company-scale impact.
The Microsoft-OpenAI partnership spans frontier AI development, cloud infrastructure, products, safety, security, commercialization, legal considerations, and long-term business strategy. Operating effectively across this environment requires clear priorities, disciplined execution, strong communication, and close coordination among leaders and teams across both companies.
We are seeking a highly strategic and execution-oriented leader to serve as the OpenAI Partnership Operations Lead.
This person will lead the operating system for the partnership. They will create structure across hundreds of moving parts, maintain a comprehensive view of priorities and dependencies, drive accountability for commitments, provide clear visibility to leadership, and ensure important issues reach resolution.
This is a principal-level role for someone who combines exceptional operational discipline with strategic judgment. The successful candidate will understand not only what is happening across the partnership, but why it matters, how the work should be approached and communicated, and what Microsoft needs to address next.
Responsibilities
Lead partnership operations
- Own and continuously improve the operating model for the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership.
- Create structure across a complex portfolio of priorities, workstreams, stakeholders, decisions, commitments, and dependencies.
- Establish effective operating rhythms, governance mechanisms, communication channels, and decision processes.
- Ensure the partnership operates as a coordinated system rather than as a collection of disconnected initiatives.
- Identify friction in how teams work together and drive practical improvements that increase speed, clarity, and effectiveness.
Maintain the full partnership context
- Develop and maintain a comprehensive view of Microsoft's priorities, activities, commitments, risks, opportunities, and unmet needs across the partnership.
- Connect information across product, engineering, research, infrastructure, safety, security, Legal, business, and executive discussions.
- Understand the strategic and technical context behind major workstreams so that operational decisions reflect Microsoft's broader objectives.
- Identify patterns, cross-workstream dependencies, and emerging issues that may not be visible to any individual team.
- Serve as a trusted source of context for the Head of OpenAI Partnership and other senior stakeholders.
Drive execution and accountability
- Translate partnership priorities and leadership decisions into clear plans, owners, milestones, dependencies, and expected outcomes.
- Ensure important commitments are documented, understood, and followed through to completion.
- Recognize when work has stalled, determine what is preventing progress, and drive the appropriate path to resolution.
- Hold stakeholders accountable for commitments regardless of organizational boundaries or seniority, while maintaining productive working relationships.
- Distinguish between issues that teams can resolve independently and those requiring broader alignment, leadership attention, or escalation.
- Maintain a strong focus on outcomes rather than activity, reporting, or process for its own sake.
Apply strategic judgment to operations
- Connect day-to-day execution to Microsoft's broader partnership objectives and long-term AI strategy.
- Evaluate not only whether work is progressing, but whether it is being approached in the right way and remains focused on the right problem.
- Identify gaps between strategy and execution and recommend changes to priorities, operating models, sequencing, or stakeholder engagement.
- Anticipate second-order effects, downstream dependencies, and potential risks before they become urgent.
- Use operational insight to help the Head of OpenAI Partnership refine priorities and make better-informed decisions.
- Challenge assumptions and surface concerns when the current approach is unlikely to produce the intended outcome.
Provide leadership visibility and decision support
- Give the Head of OpenAI Partnership and other senior leaders a clear, current, and decision-oriented view of the partnership.
- Synthesize complex information into concise explanations of what is happening, why it matters, what is at risk, and what action is recommended.
- Prepare leadership for important reviews, decisions, and discussions with OpenAI.
- Ensure communications are tailored to the audience, grounded in context, and designed to produce clarity and action.
- Reduce surprises by surfacing material changes, unresolved decisions, and emerging risks early.
- Ensure leadership discussions result in clear decisions, owners, and follow-through.
Launch new partnership initiatives
- Help turn new partnership ideas and executive priorities into executable engagements with Microsoft and OpenAI stakeholders.
- Clarify the objective, intended outcome, scope, stakeholders, dependencies, ownership model, and success criteria for new initiatives.
- Bring together the right leaders and teams across Microsoft and OpenAI to establish alignment and begin execution.
- Create the initial operating structure, governance, communication model, and execution plan needed to build momentum.
- Guide new engagements from early concept through initial execution and integration into the broader partnership operating model.
- Transition mature initiatives to the appropriate long-term owners while retaining visibility into dependencies and partnership-level implications.
Coordinate across Microsoft and OpenAI
- Build trusted relationships with product leaders, engineers, researchers, business leaders, legal professionals, and executives across both companies.
- Ensure Microsoft teams remain coordinated when engaging OpenAI on shared priorities or interconnected work.
- Navigate differing perspectives, unclear ownership, and competing priorities with sound judgment and professionalism.
- Facilitate difficult discussions and help stakeholders reach clear decisions without creating unnecessary process or bureaucracy.
- Represent Microsoft's priorities, needs, and context clearly in operational discussions with OpenAI.
Qualifications
Required/minimum qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree AND 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
Additional or preferred qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree AND 12+ years experience engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
- 8+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
- 3+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
- 1+ year(s) of experience reading and/or writing code (e.g., sample documentation, product demos).
- Extensive experience leading complex, cross-functional technical programs, strategic operations, business operations, or company-wide initiatives.
- Demonstrated ability to create structure and drive execution in fast-moving environments with unclear ownership, competing priorities, and incomplete information.
- Strong strategic judgment and the ability to connect operational decisions to broader business and technology objectives.
- Exceptional organizational ability, including the capacity to maintain context across many concurrent workstreams while identifying the issues that matter most.
- Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries, drive accountability, and move complex work toward resolution without direct authority.
- Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, including experience advising senior leaders and synthesizing complex information into clear, decision-oriented recommendations.
- Familiarity with AI development, cloud platforms, infrastructure, product commercialization, or emerging technologies.
- Experience supporting a major technology partnership or cross-company initiative, including communicating and coordinating directly with external partners on complex technical or strategic work.
Technical Program 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.
