This role is part of the Microsoft AI Team. The MAI Team mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. As team members, we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals.
MAI is a startup-like team inside Microsoft, created to push the boundaries of AI toward Humanist Superintelligence — ultra-capable systems that remain controllable, safety-aligned, and anchored to human values. Our mission is to create AI that amplifies human potential while ensuring humanity remains firmly in control. We aim to deliver breakthroughs that benefit society — advancing science, education, and global well-being.
Our team is led by Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI. We bring together leading researchers, engineers, and product builders who have contributed to many of the most significant advances in modern AI.
As a Principal Product Manager, you will help shape the next generation of AI models. Working backward from customer and product needs, you will identify opportunities for new research, develop evaluations and datasets, and partner closely with researchers and engineers to drive model development and deployment. You will play a critical role in translating emerging capabilities into impactful products and experiences.
Candidates that thrive at MAI
Hold an exceptionally high bar for delivering excellence in every task
Are able to balance speed and quality even when delivering ambiguous or emerging goals
Bring ambitious bias for action, push boundaries, and take ownership
Keep things simple
Deeply and authentically value teamwork
Maintain an optimistic, humble, can-do attitude to all tasks, big and small
Responsibilities
Own and deliver the model roadmap: Define the roadmap in collaboration with key stakeholders. Understand and navigate tradeoffs quickly and strategically. Balance quality with speed. Drive continuous progress through ambitious and energized product leadership.
Partner to build alignment: Work closely with partner teams to understand and translate their product needs into model requirements.
Define model evaluations: Take a scientific, data-driven approach to product success. Build relevant benchmarks that enable us to climb to frontier quality on the tasks that matter for the product.
Determine launch readiness: Establish clear criteria for model launches. Own the go/no-go decisions that balance capability, risk, and product goals. Ensure strong alignment and transparent, regular communication throughout the launch process.
Stay at the frontier: Track the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Translate what you learn into actionable product priorities.
Qualifications
Required/Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
- OR equivalent experience.
- Bachelor's Degree AND 12+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
- OR equivalent experience.
- 4+ years experience taking a product, feature, or experience to market (e.g., design, addressing product market fit, and launch, internal tool/framework).
- 6+ years experience improving product metrics for a product, feature, or experience in a market (e.g., growing customer base, expanding customer usage, avoiding customer churn).
- 6+ years experience disrupting a market for a product, feature, or experience (e.g., competitive disruption, taking the place of an established competing product).
- 5+ experience defining product requirements for AI models and driving decisions and execution across multiple senior level stakeholders.
- 5+ years direct, hands-on collaboration with model researchers and ML engineers in areas such as model training, evaluation, computing infrastructure, agentic and reasoning models, where you can point to your concrete contribution.
- Proven ability to ship best-in-class AI models or AI enabled products in a fast-paced, competitive environment.
- Demonstrated ability to understand and reason with precision through the technical and commercial drivers required to determine a Go to Market (GTM) strategy for new AI products.
- Proven ability to bring successful models, agents, or native AI products to market by deeply engaging with customers and developers across different verticals.
Product 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
Product Management IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $165,600 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 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.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree (or equivalent experience) and 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
- 4+ years experience taking a product, feature, or experience to market (design, PMF, launch)
- 6+ years experience improving product metrics (growing users, expanding usage, reducing churn)
- 6+ years experience disrupting a market with a product or feature
- 5+ years experience defining product requirements for AI models and driving decisions across senior stakeholders
- 5+ years direct, hands-on collaboration with model researchers and ML engineers (model training, evaluation, infra, agentic/reasoning models)
- Proven ability to ship best-in-class AI models or AI-enabled products in fast-paced environments
- Demonstrated ability to determine go-to-market strategy for new AI products
- Proven ability to engage customers and developers to bring models, agents, or native AI products to market
Microsoft Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Microsoft and has not been reviewed or approved by Microsoft.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is presented as broadly competitive overall, with clear role/level/location variation and an emphasis on using posted ranges and band information for apples-to-apples comparisons.
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Retirement Support — Retirement benefits are described as a standout, highlighted by a strong 401(k) match structure and immediate vesting, plus additional plan features for tax-advantaged saving.
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Parental & Family Support — Family-oriented benefits are portrayed as a meaningful strength, with substantial paid parental leave and added supports like back-up care and adoption/surrogacy assistance.
Microsoft Insights
What We Do
At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create. Today, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world.
