Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be and take their careers further. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness, and the sky is the limit thinking in a cloud-enabled world.

Microsoft’s Azure Data engineering team is leading the transformation of analytics in the world of data with products like databases, data integration, big data analytics, messaging & real-time analytics, and business intelligence. The products our portfolio include Microsoft Fabric, Azure SQL DB, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, and Power BI. Our mission is to build the data platform for the age of AI, powering a new class of data-first applications and driving a data culture.

Within Azure Data, the databases team builds and maintains Microsoft's operational Database systems. We store and manage data in a structured way to enable multitude of applications across various industries. We are on a journey to enable developer friendly, mission-critical, AI enabled operational Databases across relational, non-relational and OSS offerings.

The Azure SQL team is looking for a Senior Product Manager to lead strategy and innovation across the SQL core engine—spanning storage engine internals, query processing, and performance optimization. In this role, you will define the multi‑year roadmap, partner deeply with engineering, and use telemetry and customer insights to drive high‑impact improvements in scale, reliability, and efficiency. You will collaborate across Azure platform teams to shape cloud‑optimized engine capabilities, influence competitive positioning, and support enterprise customers with mission‑critical workloads. This is a highly technical, high‑leverage role that shapes the foundation used by millions of databases across Azure, on‑premises, and hybrid environments.

We do not just value differences or different perspectives. We seek them out and invite them in so we can tap into the collective power of everyone in the company. As a result, our customers are better served.

• Own the long‑term roadmap for the Azure SQL storage engine, query processor, and performance subsystems—focusing on scale, latency, reliability, and cloud‑optimized efficiency.
• Drive cross‑team execution with SQL Engine, Storage, Compute, Networking, and Azure platform teams to deliver foundational performance and engine improvements.
• Use deep customer and telemetry insights to identify performance gaps, storage inefficiencies, query plan issues, and drive data‑backed prioritization.
• Define and monitor core engine KPIs, including IO latency, throughput, plan stability, memory efficiency, and end‑to‑end workload performance.
• Lead competitive and market analysis across cloud databases to inform strategy, positioning, and differentiation.
• Engage directly with enterprise customers to unblock complex workloads, guide performance tuning, and validate new engine capabilities.
• Partner across engineering, field, and operations to ensure reliability, live‑site quality, and autonomous behaviors improve continuously.
• Embody our culture and values

• Technical expertise and hands‑on experience with database internals, including storage engine behavior, query processing fundamentals, indexing, and transaction/log architecture.
• 5+ years of product management or equivalent technical leadership experience in databases, distributed systems, or cloud platforms.
• Ability to translate customer workloads, telemetry data, and performance trends into actionable product requirements.
• Strong cross‑team collaboration and communication skills, with experience partnering on complex technical features.
• Experience applying data‑driven decision‑making using telemetry, performance metrics, or workload insights.
• Ability to engage customers on workload patterns, architecture decisions, and cloud adoption scenarios.
• Experience troubleshooting database performance or reliability issues (e.g., IO stalls, long‑running queries, plan regressions) as part of understanding customer pain points.
  
  Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience with SQL Server internals or other major database engines (PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL).
• Background in performance engineering, distributed systems, or cloud-scale storage architecture.
• Familiarity with competitive database platforms (Aurora, AlloyDB, Autonomous DB) and modern optimization approaches.
• Experience partnering with CSS/SRE organizations on diagnostic tooling, incident patterns, or self‑serve troubleshooting workflows.
• Understanding of Azure ecosystem components: Storage, Compute, Networking, Arc, resource governance, and monitoring systems.

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.