Principal AI Technical Program Manager

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft's mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers' heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.

Microsoft Security AI's NEXT R&D labs is the strategic incubation engine behind the next generation of AI-native security products. Our team blends scientific rigor, curiosity, and customer obsession to deliver life-changing innovations that protect millions of users and organizations by building the next generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-native security products. In the 18 months since our founding, we've driven the science behind Microsoft Security Copilot and delivered both foundational and specialized models. We pursue long horizon bets while landing near term impact, taking ideas from zero-to-one (0 1) prototypes to Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and then one-to-many (1 N) platform integration across Microsoft Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Intune, and Purview. Our culture blends ambition and scientific rigor with curiosity, humility, and customer obsession; we invest in new knowledge, collaborate across worldclass scientists and engineers, and tackle the immense challenge of protecting millions of customers. As a Principal AI Technical Program Manager, you will lead foundational and applied research in artificial intelligence and machine learning, driving innovation from concept to production. You will orchestrate complex, cross-functional AI initiatives, drive clarity and results across ambiguous spaces, and ensure our teams ship reliable, scalable, and responsible AI systems. You'll work closely with scientists, engineers, and product leaders. You will also use your technical and coding skills to 'vibe code' experiences demonstrations and proof of concepts to share your vision, prototype and discuss technical designs through hands on AI experience.

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:

Program Leadership: Drive end-to-end delivery of AI-native security products, from incubation (0 1) to platform scale (1

• N). Align stakeholders across engineering, research, and product teams to deliver cohesive customer value.
• Technical Depth: Engage deeply in technical design reviews, read and prototype code, and help define APIs/data contracts. Be model-literate—understand when to use LLMs, classical ML, or hybrid approaches, and how to evaluate them.
• AI/ML Program Management: Coordinate cross-discipline teams to deliver responsible, high-quality AI features. Set and track metrics for model quality, reliability, latency, and cost.
• Responsible AI & Security: Ensure privacy, security, and responsible AI guardrails are designed in from day one. Coordinate safety reviews, compliance, and incident readiness.
• Customer & Outcome Focus: Engage with enterprise customers and field teams to co-design solutions, gather feedback, and iterate quickly based on real-world telemetry.
• Mentorship & Culture: Foster a builder culture of velocity and quality, mentor others, and contribute to a growth mindset environment.

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree AND 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years technical program management experience in software, cloud, or AI/ML systems.
• 3+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
• Hands-on coding ability in one or more languages (e.g., Python, C#, C++, JavaScript/TypeScript); comfortable prototyping and reading Pull Requests.

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 background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Additional or preferred qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree AND 12+ years experience engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.
• Experience with GenAI/LLM techniques and tooling (prompt engineering, retrieval/vector stores, agents/tool use, content safety/guardrails, eval frameworks).
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills; ability to create clarity in ambiguity and align diverse teams.
• 3+ years building systems and writing code, prototyping or vibe coding your way to through a proof of concept.
• Security domain expertise (e.g., threat detection/response, SIEM/SOAR, identity, endpoint, cloud security) and familiarity with analyst workflows.
• Experience shipping cloud services or platforms at scale (multi-tenant, high-throughput) with measurable customer and business impact.

Technical Program Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $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:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until November 17, 2025

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.