Principal Technical Program Manager - FDE

In the Microsoft Frontier Company Engineering team, you won’t just build software; you’ll deliver real outcomes for some of the world’s most complex organizations.

We are a global team of world-class engineers who have been working in a Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) model for more than a decade, embedding directly within customer teams to solve their toughest challenges, side-by-side, and shipping production-ready solutions in days, not months.

As a Principal Technical Program Manager, you will embed with strategic customers to lead complex technical programs, owning the full customer journey from problem definition through delivery and driving measurable business outcomes. You’ll work in small, multidisciplinary crews alongside engineers, data scientists, and designers, operating with high autonomy to turn ambiguous problems into shipped solutions.

Our work is powered by AI, applying the mindset and tooling across the entire development lifecycle to move from idea to production in days while maintaining the highest standards of security, quality, and trust.

This role offers the opportunity to:

• Lead complex technical programs from problem definition through to delivered outcomes

• Drive decisions that directly influence business strategy and customer outcomes

• Collaborate with leading global organizations across industries

• Apply the latest advancements in AI and engineering workflows to deliver value at 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.

Responsibilities

• Embed with strategic customers to lead complex technical programs with high autonomy, aligning business needs with engineering solutions across AI, cloud, and data. Take ownership of the customer journey end-to-end, from problem definition through co-engineering delivery to measurable business outcomes.

• Apply AI assisted engineering practices as a daily operating mode: use AI tools across the full software development lifecycle to accelerate requirements-to-specs, generate high-quality engineering artifacts from customer context, and drive continuous flow of value from business need to production.

• Operate fluently in engineering tooling (e.g., VS Code, GitHub, AI agents) as primary work surfaces for planning, documentation, and technical program leadership. Validate AI-generated outputs with domain expertise to maintain quality at speed.

• Navigate ambiguity in customer environments with self-direction and high ownership. Make technical and program decisions with incomplete information, proactively identify opportunities and manage risks, providing data-driven recommendations to stakeholders.

• Champion and cultivate reusable solution patterns, open-source assets, and engineering playbooks that scale impact beyond individual engagements. Contribute to the broader engineering community through knowledge sharing and best practices.

• Partner with multi-disciplinary engineering teams (software engineers, data scientists, designers) to evaluate, design, and deliver AI-powered cloud solutions side-by-side with customer engineers. Give key stakeholders data-driven recommendations based on identified risks and tradeoffs.

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree AND 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects., * Bachelor’s Degree AND 12+ years experience engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
• 1+ year(s) of experience reading and/or writing code (e.g., sample documentation, product demos).
• 1+ years of experience in customer-facing technical roles (e.g., consulting, solutions engineering, field engineering, or similar).
• Experience with AI/ML technologies, cloud architecture, data engineering, and using AI tools and workflows in creating software engineering artifacts.
• Enjoy travel and are comfortable with travel up to 25%

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.