Senior Program Manager, Strategic planning - Datacenter

Overview

Microsoft Cloud Operations and Innovation (CO+I) is the team behind Microsoft's cloud infrastructure and is responsible for innovating, planning, designing, building, and operating one of the largest datacenter fleets in the world. We support product teams by providing secure, compliant, cost-efficient, and highly available global infrastructure that Microsoft's customers depend on.

Within Lease Central Planning, we are looking for a Senior Program Manager in Strategic planning to help enable data-driven demand and supply planning decisions across a complex and fast-growing lease portfolio. This role will combine business program management, analytical rigor, and stakeholder communication to transform demand signals, supply data, portfolio metrics, and business context into trusted insights and decision-ready recommendations.

The successful candidate is a program manager and analytical problem solver who thrives in ambiguity, brings structure to complex business questions, and communicates clearly with cross-functional stakeholders. You will partner across planning, finance, site acquisition, lease delivery, engineering, and regional teams to build scalable reporting mechanisms, identify risks and opportunities, and present insights that support timely business decisions.

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

* Build and maintain portfolio-level analytics, dashboards, scorecards, and reporting mechanisms that provide visibility to demand, supply, portfolio health, risks, opportunities, and key decision points.

* Analyze demand signals, supply optionality, capacity constraints, planning assumptions, market intelligence, and execution performance to identify trends, gaps, tradeoffs, and recommended actions.

* Translate complex data and business context into clear insights, scenarios, narratives, and recommendations that enable stakeholders to understand what is happening, and what decisions or actions are needed.

* Support recurring demand and supply planning rhythms by preparing standardized reporting, ad hoc analysis, briefing materials, and insight packages for leadership reviews, governance forums, and decision meetings.

* Partner with cross-functional teams to define business questions, validate assumptions, align metrics, improve data quality, and increase confidence in planning inputs and outputs.

* Use business program management discipline to manage intake, priorities, milestones, dependencies, risks, and follow-through across analytics and planning work streams.

* Develop scalable and repeatable insight-generation mechanisms, including metric definitions, data quality checks, templates, and process improvements that improve consistency and reduce manual effort.

* Present insights, tradeoffs, and recommendations to business stakeholders and leadership audiences; facilitate alignment by documenting decisions, actions, owners, and implications.

* Continuously improve the quality, speed, and usability of planning analytics by identifying opportunities to automate reporting, streamline processes, and strengthen reporting governance.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

* Bachelor's Degree AND 4+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.

* 2+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

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.

Preferred qualifications:

* Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.

* 6+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects.

* 3+ years experience using data and business analysis to support planning, operational, portfolio, or investment decisions.

* 3+ years experience managing programs or work streams across multiple stakeholders, including prioritization, milestones, risks, dependencies, and follow-through.

* Experience in supporting demand planning, supply planning, capacity planning, portfolio analytics, cloud infrastructure, datacenter development, real estate, lease planning, or other complex operational environments.

* Hands-on experience with analytics and reporting tools such as Excel and Power BI; SQL, Power Query, or other data…