Principal Product Manager

Are you passionate about defining how AI assistants and agents securely connect to the systems where organizations keep their knowledge, workflows, and business data? 

Microsoft 365 Core is building the Copilot Connectors - the foundation that enables Microsoft 365 Copilot and agentic experiences to discover, understand, and act across enterprise data and applications. Our vision is to make every relevant enterprise system accessible to Copilot through a consistent, secure, and governed platform, while preserving source permissions, organizational controls, and user trust. 

We are looking for a highly technical Principal Product Manager to define and drive the next generation of this platform. You will operate at the intersection of product leadership, systems architecture, platform strategy, developer experience, and ecosystem development. You will partner with engineering leaders, architects, security experts, and product teams across Microsoft to shape how first-party, partner, and customer-built connectors are developed, onboarded, managed, discovered, and used across Copilot experiences. 

In this role, you will own the strategy and product direction for a product that supports multiple connector patterns - including indexed enterprise knowledge, real-time retrieval, user-context access, and agent-driven actions. You will help create a coherent connector experience across Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, agents, and other Copilot surfaces, while simplifying the lifecycle for developers, administrators, and end users. 

You will shape how connectors authenticate, synchronize, expose tools and data, enforce permissions, and participate in agentic workflows. You will also influence investments across multiple organizations to establish common contracts, governance models, and platform capabilities for connecting Copilot to enterprise systems at hyperscale. 

This role requires deep technical credibility, solid product intuition, customer obsession, and the ability to align senior leaders across organizations around a shared product and architectural vision. 

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.

• Define and drive the long-term vision, strategy, roadmap, and platform investments for the Copilot Connectors. 
• Establish a unified connector model that brings together indexed content, real-time data access, user-context retrieval, and agent-driven actions. 
• Shape the end-to-end connector lifecycle, including development, validation, certification, publishing, deployment, discovery, configuration, monitoring, updating, and retirement. 
• Define how connector capabilities are represented and packaged so customers can access knowledge, tools, and actions through a coherent experience rather than managing fragmented integrations. 
• Drive consistent end-user experiences for connector discovery, authorization, activation, and use across Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, agents, and other Copilot surfaces. 
• Simplify administrator experiences for connector deployment, application provisioning, authentication, permissions, synchronization, governance, health monitoring, and compliance. 
• Establish platform contracts and architectural patterns for authentication, identity, permission enforcement, data synchronization, schema mapping, retrieval, tool invocation, and action execution. 
• Define the strategy for hybrid connectors that combine tenant-level synchronization with real-time, user-authorized access and actions. 
• Create intuitive, scalable developer experiences - including SDKs, APIs, tools, documentation, samples, and validation frameworks - for first-party teams, partners, independent software vendors, and enterprise developers. 
• Grow a healthy connector ecosystem by reducing time to build and publish connectors, improving quality, and enabling partners to reach customers across Microsoft Copilot experiences. 
• Partner with security, privacy, compliance, and responsible AI teams to ensure connectors are trustworthy, permission-aware, auditable, resilient, and appropriate for enterprise use. 
• Define how connector data and tools are grounded, ranked, cited, and invoked so Copilot delivers relevant, accurate, and explainable outcomes. 
• Drive platform capabilities for connector observability, diagnostics, reliability, throttling, freshness, quality measurement, and lifecycle management at hyperscale. 
• Work closely with customers and partners to understand their highest-value systems and scenarios, identify adoption barriers, and translate insights into platform investments. 
• Define success metrics across connector coverage, developer velocity, onboarding completion, reliability, content freshness, discovery, activation, usage, answer quality, and customer value. 
• Lead cross-company initiatives to align product experiences, technical architectures, governance models, and investment priorities across Microsoft. 
• Build deep partnerships with senior technical leaders and executives to establish a shared vision for connecting Copilot and agents to enterprise systems. 
• Mentor product managers and technical leaders while establishing solid product, architectural, and operational practices across the organization. 

Required/Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development.
  • OR equivalent experience.

Additional or preferred qualifications

Other Requirements: Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree AND 10+ years of experience in product/service/program management, software development, or an equivalent technical discipline.
  • OR equivalent experience. 
• Experience defining product strategy and roadmaps for technically complex platforms, developer products, enterprise services, or distributed systems. 
• Demonstrated ability to work closely with engineering and architecture teams and contribute meaningfully to technical design and platform trade-offs. 
• Experience leading initiatives that require alignment across multiple organizations, disciplines, and senior stakeholders. 
• 8+ years of experience taking a platform, product, feature, or developer experience from strategy through design, implementation, launch, and adoption. 
• 8+ years of experience improving measurable product outcomes, such as customer adoption, developer velocity, engagement, reliability, retention, or ecosystem growth. 
• Experience building enterprise integration platforms, connector ecosystems, extensibility platforms, developer platforms, or API-based products. 
• Experience with one or more relevant technical areas, such as APIs, SDKs, identity and authorization, OAuth, enterprise application provisioning, data synchronization, search and retrieval, distributed systems, or agent tool protocols such as MCP. 
• Understanding of enterprise security and governance concepts, including least-privilege access, delegated and application permissions, consent, data boundaries, auditing, compliance, and administrative controls. 
• Experience designing products that serve multiple personas, including end users, administrators, developers, partners, and independent software vendors. 
• Experience creating coherent platform experiences across different integration patterns, data sources, applications, and user surfaces. 
• Familiarity with AI grounding, retrieval-augmented generation, semantic indexing, tool invocation, agentic workflows, or enterprise knowledge systems. 
• Solid understanding of platform reliability, observability, lifecycle management, compatibility, and versioning. 
• Demonstrated ability to build an ecosystem strategy and work with external partners to deliver high-quality integrations. 
• Solid empathy for developers and customers, with a track record of working backward from their needs. 
• Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills across technical and non-technical audiences and all levels of an organization. 
• Solid product judgment, design thinking, structured problem-solving, analytical skills, and data-driven decision-making. 
• Track record of going technically deep and quickly developing expertise in emerging technologies. 
• Ability to create clarity, build a compelling vision, and define an actionable roadmap in complex and ambiguous areas. 
• Intellectual curiosity, a collaborative and positive approach, and a demonstrated bias for action. 
• A commitment to building a healthy, inclusive team culture and actively contributing to that culture. 
• Experience building AI platforms, agentic systems, enterprise connectors, or Copilot extensibility experiences. 

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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.