Job Description

Empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. That's what inspires us, drives our work and pushes us to challenge the status quo every day. Through our Cloud-first strategy, we strive to deliver solutions that are optimized for the world and enable customers to drive their business more successfully. Microsoft's Margin Strategy and Investment Optimization (MSIO) team is an exciting and fast-evolving finance team at the forefront of Microsoft's Cloud-first strategy. We are looking for a talented and motivated individual to help shape the future of our cloud products.

The team's charter is to optimize our investments in cloud infrastructure while driving down unit cost of capacity, ensuring cloud services achieve both profit and gross margin growth. As a crucial member of the team, you'll also support long term bets and drive competitive intelligence to keep Microsoft Cloud ahead of the competition. All while enhancing transparency into Cloud Infrastructure investments, safeguarding shareholder interest.

We are looking for a Finance Manager to join our Azure Platform and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Incubation team. This individual will provide decision support and financial planning for Microsoft's AI Platform services, including Azure Machine Learning (AML) and Azure Cognitive Services. This is a rare opportunity to join a finance team supporting the gross margin health of new services that will continue to shape the future of Microsoft's cloud businesses.

Responsibilities:

* Lead day-to-day partnership with AI Platform engineering teams to drive best-in-class gross margins
* Develop data driven frameworks to inform investment decisions, measure progress, and drive accountability with business partners to maximize return on investment (ROI) for Microsoft's AI bets
* Identify and drive cross-functional cost efficiencies including resource optimization, engineering optimization, and efficient AI Platform capacity planning.
* Partner with the engineering and product marketing teams to support end-to-end product planning for new business models, and long-term steady state profitability strategies.
* Manage the financial health of new and existing platforms and workloads through insightful reporting, accurate forecasting, and long-range planning aligned to steady state gross margin targets.
* Articulate findings into high quality communications and facilitate executive decision making across engineering, marketing, and finance executive leaders.
* Partner across finance orgs, including revenue planning, infrastructure, R&D, and FP&A to drive results.
* Bachelor's degree in business/finance or computer science/engineering; MBA preferred
* 4+ years of relevant experience with progressive advancement within your discipline
* Strong partnering capabilities, with the ability to influence business partners without direct authority and to appropriately push back when required
* High level of intellectual curiosity, and interest in the latest trends in AI technology
* Self-starter who thrives in ambiguous, fast moving environments with evolving technology and business model trends
* Strongly prefer deep understanding of the technology industry, particularly commercial public and private cloud services, business models and economics
* Ability to communicate complex analysis in a simple way with exceptional oral and written communication skills.
* Proven leadership skills, with demonstrated results in proactively driving and delivering high value/high-impact project results through both individual and virtual-team efforts
* Strong analytical skills, financial modeling capabilities, and ability to think strategically
* Comfort working at multiple altitudes, from strategic/high-level projects to detailed monetization, cost analysis
* Ability to handle multiple tasks under tight deadlines, quickly prioritize for impact and the resourcefulness to deliver

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.