Technical Program Manager

Principal Technical Program Manager - Microsoft Research Catalyst Lab

Join a team working at the center of frontier AI. You'll collaborate directly with researchers in one of the world's premier research labs, transforming breakthrough ideas into real, reliable, scalable capabilities used across Microsoft products. This role sits at the high impact intersection of research engineering product, where the work you do directly shapes what AI becomes next.

Focus Areas You May Work On

• Agentic Memory
• Efficiency
• The physical world
• Security
• Frontier model architectures
• Mathematics and logic applied to LLMs

What We're Looking For

You might be a great fit if you:

• Love the zone where research meets engineering - the space where new ideas become real systems.
• Feel energized by messy, open-ended problems where exploration and clarity are equally important.
• Can turn a paper into a prototype - and a prototype into a product.
• Care about performance, safety, correctness, and experience, not just cleverness.
• Communicate clearly, collaborate naturally, and debug anything with calm and rigor.
• Want to build systems that meaningfully advance what AI can do, not just iterate on what already exists.

Bring your drive, rigor, curiosity, and the ambition to create something extraordinary.

How we work

We operate with urgency and ambition:

• Short iteration cycles: hypothesis prototype evaluate refine ship

• Deep collaboration with researchers inventing new capabilities
• High ownership of systems, experiments, and outcomes
• Evidence-driven decisions informed by evals, metrics, and safety signals
• A builder's mindset: clarity, craft, and care for the details that make systems robust

You'll join a team driven by curiosity, accountability, and the conviction that we are building something that truly moves the field forward, tackling problems that don't even have names yet alongside people defining the state of the art.

If this excites you, we want to meet you

Bring your curiosity. Bring your craft. Bring your appetite for building the future.

And come work with people who are redefining what's possible in AI; in the place where tomorrow's breakthroughs are being born.

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.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

#Research

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end delivery of complex, multi-team technical programs bridging research, engineering, and product organizations.
• Translate strategic objectives into clear programs with well-defined scope, success metrics, timelines, and deliverables.
• Partner with research scientists, engineers, and external partners to align stakeholders on priorities, dependencies, and trade-offs.
• Facilitate cross-organizational collaboration, clear communication, and synchronized execution - including risk assessments and mitigation plans.
• Drive data-informed decision making and progress reporting for both technical and executive audiences.

Build repeatable program frameworks, tools, and templates that scale across future Catalyst initiatives.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree AND 6+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

A successful candidate needn't have all, or any, of these qualifications:

• 3+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.
• Experience working in research environments or innovation labs where objectives span discovery, prototyping, and early-stage impact validation.
• Experience with modern software development lifecycles, data platforms, ML/AI systems, and tooling that supports research-to-production pipelines.
• Prior work involving external partnerships, ecosystem alignment, or community engagement.
• Familiarity with Agile, Lean, or hybrid program execution methodologies and tooling.

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:
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.