Overview

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. The Purview team embraces the advancements in artificial intelligence, with groundbreaking research across deep learning, NLP, LLMs, RL, and graph-based approaches.

Our mission is to stay ahead of emerging technological trends and seamlessly embed transformative AI capabilities into our product ecosystem. We aim to deliver solutions that not only address current challenges but also pave the way for the future of Purview. We are seeking an Senior Applied Scientist/Engineer to join our dynamic team under the leadership of a Group Squad Leader. This role focuses on advancing AI-driven solutions that bridge cutting-edge research and practical applications, enabling impactful innovation across products and services. You will collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to design, prototype, and deploy AI models that solve complex real-world problems. 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

Role Overview

The Principal Squad Leader is a senior, company-impact leadership role within DSCGP, accountable for end-to-end business, customer, and engineering outcomes. This role operates as a strategy-to-execution integrator, shaping direction, scaling operating models, and ensuring sustained impact across a portfolio of initiatives rather than a single product or team.

the role is expected to:

Define and institutionalize the Squad Model at scale
Translate executive strategy into durable operating mechanisms
Drive measurable business outcomes (usage, adoption, reliability, cost, customer trust)
Influence beyond direct authority to align multiple senior leaders, functions, and orgs

This role is a force multiplier—unblocking teams, aligning leaders, and accelerating outcomes across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

1. Portfolio-Level Strategy & Vision

Own strategic direction and execution for a portfolio of squads delivering critical DSCGP outcomes.
Anticipate market trends, regulatory shifts, and customer needs, shaping long‑term product and platform roadmap.
Convert ambiguous, executive-level strategy into clear priorities, success metrics, and operating plans adopted by multiple squads.
Set a north star vision that aligns engineering, product, and business stakeholders toward shared outcomes.

2. Business & Customer Impact at Scale

Own customer success and adoption metrics across squads, including usage growth, customer satisfaction, retention, and trust signals.
Act as a trusted advisor to senior customer and partner leaders, influencing roadmap direction through deep customer insight.
Champion customer-back solutions, ensuring teams solve the right problems with measurable business impact.
Balance short-term execution with long-term platform investments that compound value over time.

3. Organizational Alignment & Executive Influence

Drive alignment across Principal Squad Leaders, Senior PMs, Engineering leaders, Architects, CXE, UX, CELA, and Trust partners.
Operate as an escalation and decision-making authority for squad dependencies, prioritization conflicts, and risk tradeoffs.
Influence without direct reporting lines, resolving ambiguity and aligning leaders around shared outcomes.
Shape narratives and updates for VP/GM-level stakeholders, ensuring clarity on progress, risks, and impact.

4. Operating Model & Execution Excellence

Institutionalize the Squad Model by defining cadence, rituals, metrics, and accountability mechanisms.
Own Rhythm of Business (RoB) for squad:
1CS Reviews
Roadmap and execution reviews
GRC, security, compliance, and cost governance
Ensure consistent engineering excellence, reliability, quality, and security posture across squads.
Proactively identify systemic execution issues and drive structural fixes, not one-time heroics.

5. Talent, Culture & Leadership Multiplication

Build, coach, and retain high-performing Squad Leaders and senior ICs.
Set the bar for inclusive leadership, talent density, and growth mindset.
Scale leadership capacity by developing leaders who develop leaders.
Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and learning, especially through ambiguity and change.

Qualifications

Qualfcation

Candidate shoould have minimum 15+ years of experience
Proven experience leading multiple teams or portfolios in a highly matrixed, global organization.
Demonstrated ability to operate at strategic, operational, and execution layers simultaneously.
Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing skills, including executive audiences.
Deep understanding of product and engineering lifecycles, customer engagement, and enterprise delivery.
Track record of driving transformational change, not incremental optimization.

Preferred / Differentiators
Experience shaping or operating new organizational models at scale.
Evidence of company-level or multi-org impact sustained over time.
Comfort making high-risk, high-leverage decisions with incomplete data.
Ability to articulate complex strategy simply and align large groups around it.

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.