Principal PM Manager

The Defender for Office 365 product group owns the protection experience for email and collaboration across Microsoft 365. The product management team drives end-to-end ownership across the product lifecycle, partnering with groups and stakeholders across the organization and directly with customers and partners. As part of Microsoft XDR, the product spans real-time detection, post-delivery response and recovery, investigation and hunting, and pre-breach capabilities. The team owns one of the largest security solutions in the XDR portfolio and helps shape how communication and productivity security will work in an era of AI-powered social engineering, using AI to strengthen detection and making MDO the trusted entry point into the broader Defender suite. The group works at the intersection of protection efficacy, explainability and everyday usability, serving SOC analysts, email administrators and end users alike. 

Are you a product leader who wants to own a product line that protects organizations every single day, and to build the team that delivers it Come work with us at the largest security company in the world, on one of its most broadly deployed security products.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 protects email and collaboration across Microsoft 365. Attackers are shifting from recognizable malicious artifacts toward adaptive, multi-step social engineering, and generative AI is lowering the cost of personalizing those attacks at scale. Staying ahead of that shift — while keeping protection fast, explainable and operable at enterprise scale, is the challenge this role leads.

You will oversee a portfolio of complex engagements while developing high-performing teams and shaping a sustainable security product. You will own the overall health, quality and success of a product line and its features within the MDO portfolio.

Enable teams and build talent

• Lead and develop product managers through coaching, clear expectations and accountability.
• Model Microsoft's Model, Coach, Care leadership culture — creating an environment where people grow and perform at their best.
• Partner with capacity and resource teams to align the right skills to the right work at the right time.
• Own the professional development of the people in your area, including onboarding, ongoing feedback and career growth, and provide managers with in-depth insight into their performance.

Own the product line

• Own the overall health, quality and success of a product line and its features in the MDO portfolio, strategy, roadmap, delivery and the outcomes customers actually experience.
• Set direction and priorities for your area, make the hard trade-offs, and hold the line on scope, sequencing and quality.
• Ensure consistent delivery excellence through Microsoft methodologies, quality standards and governance.

Drive results with customers and partners

• Engage directly with customer executives and steering committees to remove blockers, build trust and drive results.
• Partner closely with product and engineering leaders from other groups, and with business planning, marketing, sales, customer success, support and finance, acting as the point of contact for your area across disciplines.
• Manage existing relationsionship with 3rd parth companies and Identify opportunities to expand existing engagements and partnerships with our ecosystem and potential partners

Shape product strategy

• Define and own the multi-year strategy for your product line, what it wins on, and what it deliberately does not do, and keep it coherent with MDO's overall direction and the broader Defender suite.
• Translate the threat landscape, customer signals, telemetry and competitive movement into a clear point of view on where the product must go next, and refresh it as the landscape shifts.
• Turn that strategy into a sequenced, fundable roadmap: name the bets, the trade-offs behind them, and the OKRs.
• Build the business case for investment, size the opportunity, define the success metrics, and defend the plan in leadership, planning and review forums.
• Influence adjacent product strategies across XDR, identity, endpoint and data to help strengthens the platform.

• 10+ years of product management experience, including 4+ years in security.
• Experience leading product managers as a manager, area lead or equivalent with a track record of growing people.
• Proven track record of owning a product line or major product area end to end, from strategy through shipping to measured business outcomes.
• Demonstrated success engaging senior customer stakeholders and executives, and turning those conversations into product direction and resolved blockers.
• Strong cross-group influence: able to align engineering, design, research, marketing, sales, support and finance around a shared plan without direct authority.
• Exceptional analytical, problem-solving and decision-making skills; data-driven by default.
• Excellent communication, writing and presentation skills.
• Demonstrated use and adoption of AI in real-life product practices, applying AI agents and tools to research, analysis, specification, prototyping and decision-making, and raising that bar across the team.
• Advantage: hands-on background in email and collaboration security, threat detection, SOC workflows or XDR.
• Advantage: experience operating at scale across multiple product areas and distributed teams.
• Advantage: BA/BSc in Computer Science or a related technical field; MBA a plus.

BA/BSc in Computer Science or a related technical field; MBA a plus

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.