Microsoft Looking For Product Planner – BPM at Issaquah, WA

Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us to achieve our mission.

With over 15,000 employees worldwide, the Microsoft Customer Experience and Success (CEnS) organization is responsible for the strategy, design, and implementation of the Microsoft end-to-end customer experience. This newly expanded organization reflects the Microsoft ambition to be known as a customer experience company, ensuring our Microsoft mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more is enabled by delighting customers and consistently exceeding their expectations in every interaction through a connected customer experience.

Microsoft has a tremendous opportunity to exceed customer expectations and drive greater customer loyalty and trust, which leads to greater satisfaction, retention, and growth. The CEnS organization is looking for people with a passion for delivering customer success to help us build a future where customers come to us, not only because we provide industry-leading products and services, and also because we provide a differentiated and connected customer experience that is rooted in our commitment to delivering on customer outcomes.

Do you love creating and deploying comprehensive solutions to solve significant global business problems? Are you a seasoned, energetic product leader with strong business acumen? Do you thrive in a global environment filled with ambiguity and adventure? Are you ready to make a significant and measurable impact in support of Microsoft Services?

To support our focus on optimizing employee and customer experience, productivity and cost, Service Center Operations Engineering is looking to hire a qualified Product Planner to collaborate with Product Managers to create, deploy, and iterate world class internal and external services. In this hands-on role, you will actively lead and drive service design and implementation while simultaneously driving comprehensive product planning across a broad portfolio of deployed services and exciting new opportunities. You will partner with global stakeholders to develop efficient, effective global services in support of thousands of field employees and external customers. You will rapidly become and be regarded as an expert in both your portfolio of work and the relevant business context.

Your role will have two primary areas of focus: direct oversight of product management projects, and comprehensive product planning for the organization. For product management projects you will work closely with Product Managers and be accountable for guiding an existing service or a new business case through the entire lifecycle (ideation to deployment to retirement). This includes support for: building and representing the business case in front of senior leadership, defining detailed requirements and effort estimates, locking scope and creating bill of materials, executing on plans and creating intellectual property, launch and deployment support, and the continuous improvement of the services in your portfolio.

Responsibilities

In a product planning capacity, you will be responsible for developing relationships, influencing strategy and gathering feedback from a diverse set of stakeholders and sources, analyzing strategic direction with practical means of making an impact, and leading the effort to set priority and direction for a portfolio of products within the Service Center scope. Activities span high-level, forward-thinking initiatives to shape the Service Center business as well as a set of detail-oriented efforts that drive efficiency and effectiveness of the product offering.

The ideal candidate is a natural leader and product evangelist with an eye for operational design and an understanding of what it takes to delight and engage our customers (Microsoft customers, Sellers, Customer Success Account Managers, Delivery Managers, etc.). You can immerse yourself in a project, often in an ambiguous environment, and deliver results. You are naturally curious and passionate about customer needs; analytical, numbers driven, and work effectively in a distributed environment. You can easily connect and partner with cross organizational stakeholders at all levels. You can develop strategies and take the lead on major initiatives to drive significant impact across the Services business. Having prior experience in Microsoft Support and/or Consulting services is a significant advantage.

Qualifications

BS/BA or equivalent experience, preferably in Business, Engineering, Operations, or Finance discipline

5+ years of experience in product or program management and/or process design in operations, sales, consulting or other business functions. 2+ years in a product leadership role is a plus.

4+ years in sales, presales or delivery with enterprise customers

Proven track record for delivering great customer experiences

Strong written and verbal communication skills with experience managing executive stakeholders

Passionate about achieving results through influencing others, making timely decisions while considering needed trade-offs, negotiating conflicts, as needed

Experience using data and metrics to support assumptions and develop convincing business cases; ability to evolve product strategy based on research, data and industry trends

Competency with all phases of project management, particularly as it relates to product planning, including gathering requirements, issue and risk identification and management, tracking dependencies and milestones, and communication of overall project status; able to keep multiple projects going across a variety of phases

Knowledge across multiple functional areas, such as product management, engineering, UI, UX, consulting, sales, customer support, finance or marketing.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.