Microsoft Frontier Company is Microsoft's outcome-driven AI engineering and delivery business, a global organization of industry experts, world-class architects, forward-deployed engineers, consultants, and delivery professionals who work together to bring Microsoft's mission of empowerment and cutting-edge technology to life for the world's most influential customers. Frontier Company is helping shape how AI, delivery discipline, and deep industry expertise come together to create faster, better, and more measurable customer outcomes, embedding our experts directly with customers to co-design, deploy, operate, and continuously improve AI systems tied to real business impact. We work side by side with customers across the full Frontier Transformation journey and pride ourselves on embracing a growth mindset, inspiring excellence, and encouraging everyone to share their unique viewpoints and be their authentic selves. Join us and help create life-changing innovations that impact billions around the world.
The Worldwide Government, Defense, & Intelligence (GD&I) Industry CTO for Microsoft Frontier Company is the technology leader responsible for identifying, shaping, and scaling agentic technology patterns across the most strategic global Government, Defense, Intelligence, and Defense Industrial Base (DIB) customers. This role translates complex mission needs into repeatable, secure, compliant agentic solution patterns that deliver real-world value and impactful mission outcomes.
The CTO serves as the bridge between industry advisors, forward deployed engineering (FDE), product groups, and industry leadership to connect customer demand, market signals, technical roadmaps, and repeatable solution opportunities. They shape engineering roadmap direction based on industry priorities, and anticipate emerging technologies, opportunities, and blockers as the world evolves. They are skilled at pattern recognition, identifying common customer needs and ensuring Microsoft Frontier Company delivers mission outcomes that translate to value for both the customer and for Microsoft.
The CTO will help Microsoft win priority strategic customers, shape the Frontier and FDE opportunity pipeline, influence engineering product and platform roadmaps, and scale proven patterns across markets, partners, and customer segments.
This role is externally visible with public sector leaders, partners, and standards bodies, as well as internally influential across Microsoft, Engineering, Partner, Legal & Gov Affairs, and Field Sales communities. It is a senior individual contributor role on the GD&I industry team with significant influence both internally and externally.
If you are technical, strategic, sales-oriented, and passionate about Government, Defense, and Intelligence missions, this role is for you!
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.
Responsibilities
Technology Leadership for GD&I
- Define and evolve the GD&I technology vision for Microsoft Frontier Company, with emphasis on AI, agentic solutions, security, sovereignty, and regulatory compliance.
- Serve as the bridge between industry advisors, FDE studios, engineering, industry leadership, and field sales, connecting customer demand, market signals, roadmap gaps, and repeatable solution patterns.
- Prioritize impact, scalable opportunities where Frontier Company can create differentiated customer outcomes and measurable business impact.
- Shape technology roadmaps by converting customer and regulatory requirements into actionable engineering feedback and product priorities.
FDE Opportunity Shaping and Technical Qualification
- Partner with industry leadership, industry advisors, account teams, and FDE studios to technically qualify and prioritize opportunities.
- Drive pattern recognition across FDE engagements and convert learnings into reusable architectures, playbooks, partner motions, and scalable solution assets.
- Help reduce friction & risk by identifying technical blockers, architectural gaps, compliance dependencies, and partner requirements.
- Ensure Microsoft Frontier Company engagements are grounded in customer mission outcomes, secure-by-design architectures, and clear paths to net-new cloud revenue and durable platform adoption.
Executive Customer and Mission Engagement
- Build trusted relationships with senior government, defense, intelligence, DIB, and national security technology leaders, serving as a strategic advisor on frontier technologies and agentic AI transformation.
- Engage directly in strategic accounts and high-priority opportunities to accelerate customer transformation, support executive decision-making, and strengthen Microsoft differentiation.
- Represent Microsoft in customer briefings, industry forums, standards bodies, policy discussions, and external events where GD&I technology leadership and credibility are required.
- Translate Microsoft technology strategy into language that resonates with mission owners, acquisition leaders, CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, CISOs, and operational commanders.
Engineering, Product, and Compliance Influence
- Serve as a principal connection point between GD&I customer needs and Microsoft Engineering, ensuring AI, security, sovereignty, compliance, and regulated-industry requirements are reflected in product plans.
- Partner with Engineering, CELA, security, compliance, and government affairs stakeholders on authorization, regulatory, and procurement motions including FedRAMP, NIST, sovereign requirements, ATO pathways, and mission-specific controls.
- Accelerate resolution of technical and policy blockers that affect strategic customer commitments, delivery, and scale.
- Shape partner integration and platform adoption strategies with software vendors, systems integrators, and mission partners where co-build and co-delivery are required to scale.
Technical Community and Operating Model Leadership
- Operate as the single-point CTO for the GD&I industry while leading through influence across a matrixed set of industry, sales, engineering, partner, and delivery teams.
- Establish clear rhythms with industry advisors, FDE studio peers, business leaders, engineering leaders, and field technical communities to align priorities, conduct technical sales enablement, and remove friction.
- Mentor and develop technical leaders across the GD&I ecosystem.
- Create mechanisms to share patterns, lessons learned, and technical guidance so successful Frontier and FDE engagements can repeat and scale globally.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
3+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
Bachelor's Degree AND 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development
OR equivalent experience.
Other Qualifications:
- The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Secret Security Clearance. Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.
- Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.
- Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
- Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of U.S. citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local United States government agency customer and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport, or other approved documents, or verified US government Clearance.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Expertise in one or more areas including AI, cloud, cybersecurity, digital transformation, and/or technology policy, including trends relevant to government, defense, intelligence, or regulated industries at a global level.
- Experience leading technology initiatives involving sovereignty, compliance, authority to operate, security, and/or mission-critical regulated environments.
- Demonstrated ability to influence product or engineering strategy across multiple organizations without direct authority, in alignment with sales strategy.
- Executive customer engagement experience with high-level government, defense, intelligence, DIB, and/or national security stakeholders.
- Experience building and leading global communities of practice, technical governance forums, or cross-functional execution rhythms.
- Experience with government, defense, intelligence, national security, sovereign cloud, or classified/regulated mission environments.
- Public speaking, standards-body participation, executive advisory, and/or GD&I-relevant thought-leadership experience. Respected, known, and influential at scale.
Technical Program 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
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
- 3+ years managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
- Bachelor's degree AND 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development, or equivalent experience.
- Active U.S. Government Secret Security Clearance.
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements (clearance verification prior to offer).
- Pass Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years.
- U.S. citizenship verification due to citizenship-based legal restrictions.
- Expertise in AI, cloud, cybersecurity, digital transformation, or technology policy relevant to government, defense, intelligence, or regulated industries.
- Experience with sovereignty, compliance, ATO/FedRAMP/NIST, or mission-critical regulated environments.
- Executive customer engagement experience with government, defense, intelligence, or DIB stakeholders.
- Experience building and leading global communities of practice, technical governance, or cross-functional execution rhythms.
- Public speaking, standards-body participation, executive advisory, or GD&I thought-leadership experience.
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.
