Director of FDE Operations

With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft's products and services, ignited by our people and culture. We drive cross-company alignment and execution, ensuring that we consistently exceed customers' expectations in every interaction, whether in-product, digital, or human-centered. CE&S is responsible for all up services across the company, including consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft's portfolio of solutions and products. Join CE&S and help us accelerate AI transformation for our customers and the world.

As the Director of FDE Operations you will be accountable for running the end to end operating system for the Frontier Deployed Engineer (FDE) program, serving as the single operational owner across intake, prioritization, resourcing, and governance from intake through delivery. This role translates strategy into repeatable, scalable execution, ensuring decisions move quickly, work lands with the right teams, and outcomes are delivered with enterprise reliability.

The role owns the program rhythm of business, operational frameworks, and cross functional orchestration spanning Engineering, ISE, ISD, CE&S, and Field teams. The role manages key stakeholders across the FDE community, while driving data backed decisioning, and ensures delivery models evolve to support increasing demand and scale.

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.

Program Operating Model & Rhythm of Business:

• Enhance and run the newly created FDE program operating model, including SteerCos, QBRs/MBRs, decision forums, and delivery cadences.
• Establish a standardized rhythm of business (RoB) to accelerate decisions, track commitments, and ensure accountability from intake through delivery and out take.
• Define ownership models, escalation paths, and fast decision criteria to enable high velocity execution while fast failing non fit requests.

Single Intake, Triage & Resourcing:

• Own the single intake ("one front door") experience for FDE customer requests, providing a unified and simplified interface for customers and account teams.
• Lead through others, the intake triage scoping resourcing decision workflow using structured backlogs, prioritization frameworks, and transparent decisioning.
• Define and enforce SLAs, routing rules, prioritization rubrics, and tagging mechanisms to land requests with the right teams and configurations at the right time.

Governance, Metrics & Transparency:

• Establish and maintain program governance, success metrics, and executive level dashboards tracking demand, delivery health, resourcing, and business impact.
• Own the system of record for program execution, ensuring accurate tracking of requests, outcomes, capacity, and operational insights.
• Proactively identify scale constraints, skill gaps, and delivery risks, driving mitigation through data driven storytelling and recommendations.

Cross Functional Orchestration:

• Orchestrate execution across Product, Engineering, Delivery, GTM, and Services organizations, influencing without direct authority.
• Remove blockers, broker trade offs, and drive decision velocity across highly matrixed teams.

Delivery Excellence & Out-take:

• Institutionalize delivery patterns, accelerators, and reusable artifacts to improve consistency, quality, and speed at scale.
• Ensure structured out take so delivered solutions become supportable through documentation, product integration, operational readiness, or handoff models.
• Capture and amplify the Voice of the Implementer to inform product investments and reduce reliance on bespoke execution.

Change Management & Continuous Improvement:

• Lead operational readiness and change management as new motions, tooling, and workflows are introduced.
• Drive continuous improvement through process simplification, standard templates, and automation opportunities.
• Ensure the operating model remains agile, enterprise grade, and integrated with Microsoft's core systems and standards.

Other:

• Embody ourcultureandvalues.

Required:

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 8+ years experience in program management, process management, or process improvement OR equivalent experience.

Preferred:

• Experience of 8-12+ years of relevant program or business operations experience
• Demonstrated experience leading large, complex business or technical programs with accountability for end to end execution and measurable outcomes.
• Proven ability to operate at enterprise or multi team scope, coordinating execution across multiple functions (e.g., Engineering, Operations, Sales, or Delivery).
• Strong expertise in program and portfolio management, including planning, dependency management, risk mitigation, and execution governance.
• Experience defining and running program level rhythm of business (e.g., reviews, checkpoints, decision forums) to drive accountability and timely outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to establish and track program success metrics, dashboards, and reporting for leadership and stakeholders.
• Proven strength in stakeholder management, including influencing senior leaders and peers without direct authority.
• Experience leading teams, senior individual contributors, or vendors, including setting expectations, managing performance, and delivering against commitments.
• Track record of driving decision velocity and operational clarity in highly ambiguous, matrixed environments.
• Demonstrated success building repeatable execution frameworks (e.g., standardized intake, governance models, execution playbooks).
• Advanced data literacy, including using KPIs, OKRs, and dashboards to guide prioritization and executive decision making.
• Experience leading change management, including adoption of new tools, processes, or operating models.
• Ability to identify and implement process automation or technology enabled efficiencies to improve program quality and speed.

Business Program Management IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $130,900 - $277,200 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 $165,600 - $303,600 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.