Principal Product Manager, Platform Engineering

Microsoft
Microsoft

Software Engineering, Product

Redmond, WA, USA

USD 142,800-274,800 / year

Posted on Jul 8, 2026
Overview

Come build, from scratch, the AI-first developer platform that lets thousands of engineers ship faster and safer.

We're a new Platform Engineering team building an internal developer platform, golden paths, and the developer experience for the Microsoft engineering teams behind the world's largest and most complex commerce platforms. Empower the teams that build the copilots and agents that tens of thousands of sellers, partners, and support people rely on around the world every day — global scale and reach with unbounded opportunity to make meaningful impact. The mandate is real, and the appetite is there, from leaders and teams: take the KTLO and toil out of engineers' days, make safe deployment the easy path, and make agent-driven workflows the default for how we build.

We run the platform as a product — teams pick it up because it's useful, not because they're told to. What's open is the technical frontier: agents change what a platform can even do. A platform used to be bounded by what you could deterministically wire across systems, with the gaps left to people to glue by hand. Now agents can carry that ambiguous, cross-system work, and building greenfield, we get to work out how much more a platform can take on.

If you'd rather ship and learn than ask permission, and you're as curious about what teams and work become in this shift as you are about the tech itself, this is the rare seat where you get to define the thing, not just run it.

Why this role

  • You own the platform as a product. You own the whole product surface across the teams we serve: what we build, for whom, in what order, and what we don't. The architects go deep on individual designs; you own the roadmap and the priorities across the whole customer base.
  • You prove the platform is working. Adoption is earned here, so evidence is everything. You own the measurement: whether engineers are faster, and the honest answer when they aren't. You instrument it, and you tell the truth about it.
  • You're a builder, not a spec-writer. This is a hands-on PM seat. You prototype with agents, stand up your own dashboards and analyses, and ship. If you need an engineer to build every mock and pull every number, this isn't your seat.
  • You run the adoption engine. You own how adoption happens at scale: onboarding, docs, and the feedback loop that turns a platform teams could use into one they reach for first.


Responsibilities
  • Own the platform roadmap across the teams we serve: aggregate demand, set priorities, sequence what ships, and make the calls on what we won't build.
  • Own the measurement: define what "faster and safer" means, instrument it, and report the honest signal, including when the platform isn't earning adoption yet.
  • Prototype and build your own dashboards, tools, and analyses with agents and code, so you can test an idea or read the data without waiting on someone else.
  • Run the adoption motion: onboarding, docs, developer relations (DevRel), and the feedback loop that turns a useful platform into an adopted one.
  • Partner with the architects and engineers on what to build and why. You own the roadmap; they own the technical how.
  • Stay close to the teams we serve: learn their real workflows, where they lose time, and the business they're driving, and weigh the whole base fairly in what we prioritize.
  • Make the case to leadership and partner orgs with evidence: what the platform changed and what it costs.

What we're looking for

  • A platform-as-a-product PM who builds, a technical product manager at heart. You've owned a developer-facing or internal product, and you prototype and analyze yourself rather than delegating every artifact.
  • AI-native. You use generative AI and agents to build — prototypes, tools, analyses, shipped product — not slideware about AI.
  • Fluent with data: product analytics and experimentation. You define the metric that matters, instrument it, and stay honest when it says the thing isn't working.
  • Comfortable that adoption is earned, never mandated, and energized by earning it on the merits rather than assuming it.
  • Technical enough to earn engineers' trust: you can read the code, reason about the architecture, and hold your own with a senior architect on tradeoffs.


Qualifications

Required / Minimum qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years in product management or software development — OR equivalent experience.

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 Cloud Background Check upon hire / transfer and every two years thereafter.

Additional or preferred qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree AND 12+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development OR equivalent experience.
  • Hands-on experience using generative AI and agents to build (prototypes, tools, or shipped product).
  • Experience owning a developer-facing or platform product (an internal developer platform (IDP), developer tools, or developer experience / DevEx) as the product owner.
  • A track record of making product decisions from data: defining the metrics, instrumenting them, and driving the outcomes.

Come build the platform that makes every engineer ship faster — and help define what a developer platform even is in the age of agents.



Product 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.