Principal Product Manager - Competitive Strategist
Microsoft
Product
USD 139,900-274,800 / year
Posted on Oct 21, 2025
Principal Product Manager - Competitive Strategist
Redmond, Washington, United States
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Date posted
Oct 20, 2025
Job number
1899166
Work site
3 days / week in-office
Travel
0-25 %
Role type
Individual Contributor
Profession
Product Management
Discipline
Product Management
Employment type
Full-Time
Overview
Windows powers over 1.4 billion devices globally and anchors the commercial PC ecosystem—spanning OEM (Original Equipment Manufacture) partners, enterprise customers, education, public sector, MSPs, ISVs, and silicon providers. The Windows organization drives innovation across client platforms, commercial strategy, and ecosystem partnerships.
We are looking for a Principal Product Manager - Competitive Strategist to lead competitive intelligence and signal routing for competitors ecosystem. This role ensures Microsoft has a real-time, data-backed understanding of how and where competive hardware is gaining ground—and turns that awareness into targeted action across product, OEM, and commercial teams.
This is a high-impact, horizontal role reporting to the CVP of Windows Ecosystem & Engagement, operating across engineering, commercial insights, and partner strategy.
What Success Looks Like:
• Microsoft knows where competition is gaining ground—before it shows in market share.
• OEM, engineering, and commercial leaders have actionable clarity, not just reports.
• Competitive insight informs roadmaps, device portfolio decisions, and partner motions.
This role is ideal for someone who thrives on ambiguity, seeks patterns in complex data, and drives impact through insight. If you’re ready to shape how Microsoft competes in a rapidly evolving ecosystem, we’d love to hear from you.
This is a high-impact, horizontal role reporting to the CVP of Windows Ecosystem & Engagement, operating across engineering, commercial insights, and partner strategy.
What Success Looks Like:
• Microsoft knows where competition is gaining ground—before it shows in market share.
• OEM, engineering, and commercial leaders have actionable clarity, not just reports.
• Competitive insight informs roadmaps, device portfolio decisions, and partner motions.
This role is ideal for someone who thrives on ambiguity, seeks patterns in complex data, and drives impact through insight. If you’re ready to shape how Microsoft competes in a rapidly evolving ecosystem, we’d love to hear from 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.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
- OR equivalent experience.
- 5+ years in competitive intelligence, strategy, market insights, or product planning.
- Experience with device/OS ecosystems, enterprise IT trends, or hardware OEMs.
Preferred Qualifcations:
- Familiarity with Windows quality metrics and enterprise customer needs.
- Experience with tools like Kusto, Power BI, or Azure ML.
- Ability to influence without authority and operate across cross-functional teams.
- Solid analytical skills with the ability to synthesize incomplete signals.
- Proven ability in storytelling and communication skills, especially with executive audiences.
Product 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
Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 31, 2025.
Responsibilities
- Track competitive device adoption, attach, pricing, and deployment trends across segments (EDU, SMB, Enterprise, Consumer).
- Aggregate competitive intelligence from field teams, customer accounts, and market signals.
- Monitor competive momentum across hardware, silicon, OS, ecosystem, and services.
- Partner with data science and BI teams to surface telemetry and share erosion signals.
- Identify early signs of displacement and competitive creep.
- Build narratives around customer preference for competive over Windows.
- Translate qualitative and quantitative signals into structured risks and directional asks.
- Route insights to action owners across Product, Engineering, and OEM teams.
- Define “so what?” and “what must change?” scenarios to drive roadmap influence.
- Create sharp, data-backed briefs and red alerts for executive audiences.
- Support share-defense, GTM, and OEM strategy with competitive intelligence.
Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.
Industry leading healthcare
Educational resources
Discounts on products and services
Savings and investments
Maternity and paternity leave
Generous time away
Giving programs
Opportunities to network and connect
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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.