Program Director

We are hiring a highly experienced Program Director to join Microsoft Frontier Company in the Netherlands and help deliver our ambition: enabling end-to-end, AI-powered customer transformation through deep industry expertise, change leadership, continuous improvement, and enterprise-grade engineering. The Program Director will turn this ambition into measurable customer outcomes by leading complex transformation programs from strategy and shaping through execution, adoption, value realization, and continuous improvement.

The role requires exceptional delivery and commercial judgement, and the ability to lead multidisciplinary Microsoft, customer, and partner teams through ambiguity. This is not a coordination role: the Program Director owns the engagement outcome, establishes the executive agenda and governance, makes timely trade-offs, protects delivery health, and ensures that transformation translates into adoption, consumption, and measurable business value.

The Program Director will be accountable for:

· Owning the end-to-end outcomes of the Netherlands organization’s most strategic customer engagements, across scope, schedule, investment, quality, risk, dependencies, adoption, cloud consumption, business value creation and driving business growth

· Serving as the senior, trusted delivery and transformation advisor to customer C-suite leaders and Microsoft executives, creating alignment on ambition, decisions, accountabilities, and measurable outcomes.

· Establishing an executive governance model with clear decision rights, outcome metrics, milestones, financial controls, RAID discipline, and a decisive escalation path.

· Translating customer strategy into an executable Frontier Transformation roadmap that connects AI opportunities, industry context, organizational change, engineering delivery, adoption, and continuous improvement.

· Leading a multidisciplinary engagement system across customer teams, Microsoft sales and account leadership, architects, engineers, consultants, Customer Success, and partners.

· Maintaining sustained C-level presence throughout the engagement, framing choices, challenging constructively, resolving cross-organizational obstacles, and protecting confidence during complex or sensitive moments.

· Leading or materially shaping pre-sales and deal development for strategic programs, including outcome definition, delivery strategy, SOW content, estimates, assumptions, dependencies, resourcing, and commercial risk.

· Ensuring delivery meets Microsoft standards for responsible AI, security, compliance, engineering quality, customer trust, and operational readiness.

· Anticipating delivery, commercial, stakeholder, and adoption risks; making timely interventions and escalating early with clear options and recommendations.

· Providing accurate executive-level signals on engagement health, forecast, capacity, consumption, value realization, and portfolio dependencies.

· Strengthening the wider Project Manager practice by coaching delivery leaders and contributing reusable methods, governance patterns, templates, and lessons learned.

The candidate must demonstrate:

· Extensive senior program management experience in complex enterprise technology environments.

· Proven experience delivering Microsoft platform-related projects, ideally across Azure, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Microsoft 365, Data/AI, Security, or broader cloud transformation.

· Ability to lead across multiple industries and customer contexts, not limited to a single vertical.

· Fluent Dutch communication skills for customer-facing engagement, executive discussions, governance meetings, and written delivery communications.

· Fluent English communication skills for international Microsoft-internal collaboration, external partner engagement, executive reporting, and cross-border delivery alignment.

· Experience working in matrixed delivery environments with multiple Microsoft, partner, and customer stakeholders.

· Strong command of delivery governance, RAID discipline, financial tracking, reporting, and escalation management.

· Commercial awareness, including the ability to understand delivery economics, burn rate, forecast implications, scope control, and value realization.

· Executive presence and ability to communicate clearly, confidently, and credibly with C-level customer stakeholders, senior internal leaders, and partner executives.

· Strong ownership mindset, judgement, resilience, and ability to operate independently with limited supervision.

Consulting Project Management IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across Netherlands is € 113,800.00 - € 265,600.00 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/corporate-pay/netherlands-corporate-pay.html

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.