Engagement Leader, Chief Executive Officer (Ceo) Co-Innovation Program

Transformation in the age of AI, which is on the agenda of virtually every enterprise worldwide, focuses on reimagining how AI and other technology will create value for customers and enable them to maintain a competitive advantage as the world embraces AI. The Customer Engagement and Co-Innovation Team (CE&CI) leads from the front, focused on building strategic partnerships and identifying lighthouse innovation opportunities with the most impactful potential partners and customers.

For over five years, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Co-Innovation has been our approach to drive deeper alignment with select customers by bringing our executive teams together with leaders from engineering, R&D, and business to discuss future state market transformation opportunities and co-create solutions to complex and impactful challenges. We utilize a unique and curated sprint process to identify business visions and technology journeys that cultivate creative and deeply contextual conversations between CEOs.

The Engagement Leader, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Co-Innovation Program, works directly with our customers’ C-suite and business leaders – as well as across Microsoft’s full portfolio of teams; Engineering, Innovation, Data Science, R&D, and others. They drive both ideation and execution planning. They discover and highlight our customers’ North Star visions; invoking the art of the possible while also mapping backwards to find no-regrets starting points that help customers and Microsoft re-imagine their business and our technology together in new ways.

As a seasoned thought leader, the CEO Co-Innovation Principal Engagement Leader drives these critical and exclusive executive engagements to create high-impact, multi-horizon joint innovations and global industry lighthouses.

The CEO Co-Innovation team seeks out and embraces a diversity of skills and experience. We view each new hire as an opportunity to add fresh perspectives, personalities, and super-powers to a team of diverse talents and backgrounds. The Engagement Leader role is one that requires a wide range of skills and acumen.

Successful Engagement Leaders have:

• A willingness and desire to think outside the box with deep customer empathy and curiosity, creativity, and a learn-it-all mindset
• Established business, technical and product development acumen including design thinking / agile / product development methodology
• Proven executive-level aptitude to drive immediate value while maintaining multi-horizon focus
• Ability to confidently interact with Microsoft and customer leaders to rapidly gain/build trust and confidence
• A forward-thinking self-starter mindset; comfortable collaborating with others, working with ambiguity, and able to effectively manage competing priorities

Responsibilities

• Demonstrates thought leadership in contributing to overall business goals, objectives, and strategies, as well as short- and long-term business priorities. Understands and identifies current program risks, impact, and develops mitigation plans impacting the broader unit.
• Gathers program requirements, identifies resource needs, creates the project plan and targets, and works across teams to align on the plan of record. Improves the operations of existing programs by applying industry methodology, defining highly complex program issues, assessing various scenarios, and selecting the optimal scenario to resolve issues. Drives clarity in highly complex program issues and strives for simplification.
• Leads others who work with cross-functional (e.g., organizational, product, business) stakeholders (e.g., Engineering) to design and run highly complex programs from initiation to delivery, independently. Provides expertise to produce collateral (e.g., proposals, strategy walking deck, internal and external pitch content) to incorporate stakeholder needs and ensure the business objectives are met.

• Shares best practices to define and execute on landing and communication plans, such as the target audience(s) and communication strategy. Leads the rhythm of business (ROB) during plan execution to ensure participants and stakeholders are communicating and responding according to the necessary cadence. Leads others to work across teams (e.g., Landing, Design, Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, Technical Program Management) to ensure all program requirements are understood and can be met.
• Shares expertise to evangelize highly complex programs to stakeholders, partners, and customers to gain buy in. Leverages data and performance metrics (e.g., Objectives and Key Results [OKRs] and Key Performance Indicators [KPIs]) to demonstrate the value of the program and show business impact. Leads others to adapt communication style and storytelling strategy according to audience and business needs.

• Leads a portfolio of projects including the project plan, timelines, milestones, financial management, performance metrics, and/or resource needs for highly complex programs. Communicates the program status and risk to relevant stakeholders and holds them accountable for following the established schedule, risk mitigation plans, and processes. Establishes objectives and success criteria for the project in an inclusive, collaborative manner with all stakeholders.
• Provides insight to lead others to understand mapping or how people, process, technology, and systems work and impact one another. Leads the collaboration including leveraging other teams (e.g., Supply Chain, Engineering, Sales) to ensure program processes are rigorous and executed efficiently. Develops processes around scope and scheduled changes for programs impacting the broader unit, and communicates them to stakeholders. Recognizes process gaps/inefficiencies and drives strategies for optimization.

• Process
  • Responsible for executing the CEO Co-Innovation framework and process
  • Work with key internal and external stakeholders to define optimal execution and progression path to accelerate realization of customer desired outcomes
  • Drive learning and content to the field, industry, and engineering
• Customer Engagement
  • Engage with a diverse group of C-level customer stakeholders to uncover and understand key business outcomes
  • Synthesize ideas and create roadmaps that identify actionable starting points that lead to ambitious north star visions
  • Curate C-level discussions based on customer ambitions
• Microsoft Engagement
  • Lead Microsoft engagement with the Account Team, Subsidiary leadership, WW Industry, Engineering Executive Sponsors, and others across Microsoft
  • Source and collaborate with customers, Microsoft leadership and content teams to create demos and session materials
  • Executive presence through interactions with CEO, CxO’s, Business & IT leaders, both within Microsoft and our most strategic accounts
• Orchestrating virtual teams
  • Orchestrate different teams and resources required for an opportunity towards the desired outcome.
  • Able to generate trust, build alliances, and orchestrate interdisciplinary teams to the benefit of customers.
  • Coach and enable account teams to identify and proactively engage key customer decision makers and influencers to unblock technical and business obstacles.
  • Leverage the Microsoft organization (e.g., engineering, product groups, Office of the CTO [OCTO], Microsoft Technology Centre [MTC], etc) to resolve complex blockers.
  • Proactively plan and align local, regional, and global team resources to best meet the needs and expectations of the customer and the Co-Innovation team and program.
• Embody our culture and values.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance or related field AND 6+ years work experience in program management, process management, process improvement
  • OR equivalent experience.

• Innovation, Agile Methodology, and/or Design Thinking credentials and experience
• Quantitative, qualitative, analytical, and conceptual problem-solving skills combined with business acumen
• Experience problem-solving individually and in a group setting
• Knowledge of drivers within a technology business
• Experience shifting priorities, while maintaining organization and control
• Proven track-record of organizing, developing, and executing strategy projects that deliver results
• Experience partnering with cross-functional leadership to turn insights into actions

Business Program Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $112,200 - $194,800 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 $142,200 - $213,200 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

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.