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The Windows Servicing and Delivery (WSD) team at Microsoft is responsible for ensuring that every Windows release is delivered with the highest quality, reliability, and customer trust. WSD is hiring a Principal Quality Excellence Lead focused on Quality Excellence, to play a critical role in upholding our quality bar across the release lifecycle and be the voice of the customer a champion for quality, always ensuring that issues are tracked, resolved, and escalated when necessary.

As a **Principal Quality Excellence Lead** , you will use your cross-functional leadership, deep analytical skills to raise concerns when quality standards are at risk. You will work closely with engineering, program management, and executive leadership to drive accountability and continuous improvement. You will get to work on one of the most iconic and widely used technology platforms in the world, touching the lives of over a billion people daily. As part of the Windows organization, you will have the opportunity to shape experiences at a massive global scale, drive industry-leading innovation, and be at the forefront of how AI transforms the way the world works. We are a team that values bold thinking, collaboration, and making a real difference in customers’ lives.

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

Leadership and Strategy

+ Define and drive the quality excellence strategy across Windows Servicing and Delivery.

+ Serve as the single-threaded owner for quality tracking and escalation across all release milestones.

+ Represent quality metrics and risks in executive forums, providing clear data and recommendations.

AI Integration

+ Identify opportunities to incorporate AI agents into quality workflows to improve issue detection, triage, and resolution velocity.

+ Partner with engineering and data science teams to pilot and scale AI-driven quality insights.

Customer Focus

+ Act as the voice of the customer by ensuring that all known issues are tracked and resolved before release.

+ Monitor customer feedback channels and integrate insights into quality dashboards and release readiness reviews.

Cross-Divisional Strategy

+ Collaborate across engineering, servicing, support, and partner teams to ensure alignment on quality goals and accountability.

+ Escalate cross-team blockers and risks to leadership with clarity and urgency.

Innovation and Best Practices

+ Champion a culture of quality excellence and continuous learning.

+ Drive adoption of best practices in issue management, including use of Trackit (http://aka.ms/trackit) and Azure DevOps (ADO) for tracking and resolution.

Continuous Improvement

+ Build and maintain dashboards and reports that provide visibility into issue trends, resolution velocity, and release readiness.

+ Lead retrospectives and post-mortems to identify systemic issues and drive long-term improvements.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

+ Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Math, Business, or related field AND 8+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development

+ OR equivalent experience.

+ Experience in leading quality initiatives across complex engineering systems or services and driving cross-functional alignment.

+ Proficiency with issue tracking and project management tools such as Azure DevOps (ADO).

+ Experience building dashboards or reports to drive decision-making and using customer feedback and data-driven decision-making skills and to drive outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications:

+ Master's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Math, Business, or related field AND 12+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development

+ OR equivalent experience.

+ Experience in Windows engineering or servicing environments.

+ Familiarity with Microsoft’s release engineering processes and quality frameworks.

+ Experience influencing without authority and driving cross-functional alignment.

Customer Experience Program Mgmt IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $163,000 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 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 Aug 2, 2025.

\#W+DJOBS

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 (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .