Principal Consulting Project Manager

at  Microsoft

Drives customer satisfaction by representing Microsoft to senior customer stakeholders reviewing and analyzing customer feedback, and leveraging trusted relationships with senior internal resources to act as the voice of the customer and ensure resolution of challenged deliveries. Drives project initiation for projects of high complexity by driving commitment of delivery resources, assigning resources across workstreams, and creating complex work breakdown structures with delivery team. Leads contracting process for partner resources by briefing partners, coordinating partner candidate interviews, and identifying and acclimating partner resources to the team. Develops detailed project management plan to drive predictable delivery for large and/or complex projects, leveraging expertise and experience to drive scope, resources, and Microsoft project schedule in alignment and collaboration with customer plan. Orchestrates and oversees a broad range of project metrics on large, complex projects with high visibility. Proactively manages risks and issues within and across large, complex projects leveraging previous experience and subject matter expertise to evaluate trends in risks and optimize mitigation strategies. Ensures timely completion and quality of deliverables and tracking of agreed upon metrics for large, complex projects. Manages communications with senior stakeholders on project health, issues, and financial performance for large and/or complex deals throughout entire project.

REQUIRED/MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s Degree in related field AND 5+ years’ experience in project management
• OR equivalent experience.
• The position requires proficiency in Spanish at a fluent level and English at an advanced level.

ADDITIONAL OR PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s Degree in related field AND 12+ years experience in project management
• OR equivalent experience.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.
• 6+ years financial management experience.
• Agile certification, Scrum Master, Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), or Professional Scrum Master One (PSM1) certification.
• Certification in relevant industry.
  Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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

Relationship Development
Drives customer satisfaction by representing Microsoft to senior customer stakeholders (e.g., Chief Executive-level), reviewing and analyzing customer feedback, and leveraging trusted relationships with senior internal resources to act as the voice of the customer and ensure resolution of challenged deliveries. Manages expectations with a high level of political sensitivity by anticipating customer reactions, interpreting small signals, and taking proactive steps accordingly. Oversees the creation of Success Expectations and customer and partner experience (CPE).
Engages with senior internal and external stakeholders (e.g., Chief Executive-level executives) as a peer with subject matter expertise. Prevents and manages escalated situations through strategic and targeted communications with senior stakeholders and delivers difficult messages as needed. Establishes governance to influence customer decision making and diffuses situations in escalations as needed.
Adheres to project compliance standards (e.g., confidentiality, privacy) and requirements of the contract and accommodates customer compliance standards, including managing compliance-related complexities (e.g., high sensitivity to confidentiality). Champions compliance by contributing to knowledge sharing across teams to build compliance capability of others.
Closure
Drives timely project closure by ensuring completion of project sign off tasks (e.g., system closeout updates, deletion of customer data, Deliverable Acceptance Form). Drives incremental process improvement by reflecting on and broadly sharing lessons learned (e.g., leading transformative projects, sharing stories with executives, developing case studies). Creates and suggests improvements to intellectual property (IP), provides feedback to managers on team member performance, and conducts closeout interviews with team members.
Contributes across teams to share knowledge and support others (e.g., All Hands, other team meetings) by serving as a thought leader or subject matter expert for a specific industry, invests in others through team or regional initiatives to develop capabilities, and provides cross-border mentoring and peer alignment to share lessons learned on challenging projects.
Contracting
Leads contracting process for customer and partner resources (e.g., contractors, vendors) by briefing partners, coordinating partner candidate interviews, and identifying and acclimating partner resources to the team. Negotiates and structures fixed-fee subcontractor contracts. Monitors and leads customer contract Amendments, Delivery Acceptance, Proof of Delivery, and Invoicing processes.
Initiation
Balances needs across projects in challenging situations (e.g., scarce technical resources) and collaborates with other groups (e.g., Independent Software Vendors, Global Delivery Center) on integrated planning and organization of onshore/offshore projects.
Drives project initiation for projects of high complexity (e.g., tailored offerings, high visibility, high impact, market making) by driving commitment of delivery resources, assigning resources across workstreams, and creating complex work breakdown structures (WBSs) with delivery team.
Intellectual Property (IP)
Researches and proactively shares intellectual property (IP) and provides recommendations for improvement including submitting new IP. Holds others accountable for reusing appropriate IP and collective knowledge by enforcing use of processes and artifacts with team members.
Monitoring and Controlling
Orchestrates and oversees a broad range of project metrics on large, complex projects with high visibility (e.g., Vice President-level) through others. Proactively ensures adherence to key performance indicators (KPIs) and provides strategic direction to drive success and adapts to high-impact changes throughout project lifecycle.
Ensures timely completion and quality of deliverables (e.g., documents) and tracking of agreed upon metrics for large, complex projects by applying quality management techniques for collecting data (e.g., benchmarking, interviews), monitoring output and implementing corrective action while proactively ensuring time and resources needed to mitigate quality risks. Manages Conditions of Satisfaction (COSs) to create required deliverables. Contributes across projects to provide peer guidance where needed.
Proactively manages risks and issues within and across large, complex projects leveraging previous experience and subject matter expertise to evaluate trends in risks and optimize mitigation strategies across projects using qualitative analyses (e.g., probability, impact, urgency) mitigation plan for high impact/probability risks. Leads recoveries and engages in resolving escalations across other projects and ensures tools are updated. Manages issue closure as a high priority and utilizes contingency planning to proactively respond when risks become issues.
Discusses and confirms customer change control at kickoff, anticipates changes and proactively addresses by probing to ensure change can happen smoothly early in the process. Tests process before initiating formal change.
Manages finances for projects with large scopes and budgets by balancing funding and resources across workstreams, performing deep analyses, and leveraging success expectations experience and expertise. Proactively aims to reduce cost and improve delivery margin without impact to quality or customer experience and understands impact of decisions on the broader business (e.g., profits and losses [P&L], accrual-based accounting).
Manages communications with senior stakeholders on project health, issues, and financial performance for large and/or complex deals throughout entire project lifecycle, tailoring communications to the audience, anticipating stakeholder requirements, and adapting the plan accordingly. Establishes formal rhythms to ensure tracking and maintenance of customer deliverables and collect and report status with all important stakeholders.
Presales
Leads pre-sales process for high-impact projects by articulating the business value proposition associated with the project/change, evaluating associated complexities and risks to ensure feasibility of commercial offer, and reviewing work of peers for quality. Participates in review of proposed scope and assists in developing Statement of Work (SOW), Work Breakdown Structures (WBSs), estimates, preliminary risk assessments, etc.
Account Delivery Management
Contributes to consumption activities, identifies patterns of consumption gaps, and drives consumption by identifying blockers to consumption goals and enabling customers, through internal teams, to get the full value of their purchases. Holds accountability for project delivery forecast.
Manages the direction of solution deliveries and influences others to secure resources to deliver on customer contracts. Ensures delivery for customers across the delivery lifecycle including envisioning, solution development, delivery planning, cloud consumption and usage, delivery management. Leads or participates in steering committee meetings with strategic customers to discuss progress toward delivery success.
Collaborates with Sales to support contract setup, signature, compliance, and execution from deal approvals to invoicing and closure. Manages areas of fiscal responsibility within project portfolio, staying within budget while driving engagement profitability and risk management.
Supports strategic relationships with key stakeholders in the customer portfolio, often as part of a steering committee, to ensure service delivery is on track and major issues are being anticipated, identified, and managed. Supports new customer opportunities in partnership with Sales with highly significant or global impacts for Microsoft. Communicates current view of delivery to customer executives on regular cadence, as appropriate.
Business Growth
Demonstrates accountability for the financial health of a project or program (e.g., revenue attainment, accurate forecasting, cost management, and utilization, skills, and capacity planning). Identifies opportunities to accelerate and drive consumption and delivery. Owns and drives backlog risk management. Drives incremental business on top of existing projects and programs through next step proposals, conducts customer discussions related to next stage proposal (NSP) and other opportunities. Engages in the pursuit cycle to ensure deals are structured appropriately. Supports and contributes to rhythm of business (ROB) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) forecasting.
Looks for or creates opportunities to maximize timely cloud consumption through current deliveries. Identifies new opportunities with customers and facilitates follow up conversations with customers on Consumption both strategically and operational, and to accelerate delivery or prevent delivery delays.
Planning
Establishes clear expectations and accountabilities (e.g., reconfirm scope, Responsible-Accountable-Consulted-Informed matrix) with all project team members (e.g., consultants) and stakeholders, as well as other Consulting Project Managers, for teams of high complexity by leading internal and external kick-off meetings (e.g., sales to delivery handoff, formal kick-off meetings) and may act as a lead project manager. Proactively engages broad set of internal and external stakeholders, including those who are impacted by project scope/outcome, but not directly involved (e.g., Enterprise Operating Unit, India Global Delivery, customer stakeholders) and engages subject matter experts in holistic planning activities, including team validation.
Develops detailed project management plan to drive predictable delivery for large and/or complex projects, leveraging expertise and experience to drive scope, resources, and Microsoft project schedule in alignment and collaboration with customer plan. Ensures use of baselining, resource load balancing, and application of work effort, dependency management, contingency planning, and utilization of software (e.g., Timeline).