Customer & Partner Engagement Manager, SME&C

In Small, Medium, Enterprises and Channel (SME&C), we are leading a high-growth, AI-powered global sales team—one that is deeply connected to our partners and driven by customer success. By uniting our Small Medium Business, Corporate, Strategy, and Partner teams, we are unlocking the largest customer opportunity, backed by the industry’s most significant investments. Leveraging the power of AI and our extensive partner ecosystem, we are redefining how businesses of all sizes adopt technology to drive growth and innovation.

As our business continues to evolve, executive customer and partner engagement plays a critical role in shaping relationships, advancing priorities, and accelerating business outcomes.

The Customer & Partner Engagement Manager, SME&C (CPEM) sits within the SME&C Executive Office and plays a pivotal role in translating executive priorities into high-impact customer and partner engagements that drive measurable business outcomes. In this role, you orchestrate executive engagements that strengthen relationships with our key customers and accelerate partner-led growth across our ecosystem. You enable teams to deliver high-quality, outcome-focused interactions, ensuring consistency, clarity and accountability. You enable teams to deliver high-quality, outcome-focused interactions, ensuring consistency, clarity, and accountability. Reporting to the Executive Engagement Lead, you work across SME&C, Microsoft’s Commercial Business (MCB), and the broader Microsoft network to drive end-to-end executive engagement planning and follow-through. You connect stakeholders and ensure commitments turn into action, elevating execution through operational excellence, strong judgement, and an AI-first approach.

This role requires an effective collaborator who combines structured execution with strategic thinking, communicates with clarity and influence, and thrives in a fast-paced executive environment. You work effectively across boundaries, navigate complexity with confidence, and continuously improve ways of working to drive greater efficiency, insight, and impact.

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. 

Customer & Partner Engagement

• Orchestrate end-to-end executive engagements—ensuring each interaction is purposeful, insight-driven, and tied to clear business outcomes
• Prepare and coach segment teams and stakeholders to deliver high-impact, outcome-focused engagements
• Own cross-functional follow-up and lead debriefs—driving accountability and measuring follow-through
• Manage escalations with clarity and pace—simplifying complexity and aligning the right stakeholders effectively
• Lead a portfolio of Customer & Partner Engagement (CPE) projects, including, but not limited to, planning flagship customer and partner moments and designing and delivering impactful experiences
• Lead planning and execution of external engagements during executive country visits—ensuring local relevance, strong partner representation, and measurable outcomes

Business Program Excellence & Strategic Execution

• Partner with the External Engagement Lead to bring a point of view on focus areas, market trends, and opportunities—drawing on customer, partner, and field signals
• Drive operational excellence by designing robust processes and ensuring quality to support external engagement goals
• Identify and scope opportunities to develop new programs and improve current ones
• Share expertise to evangelize highly complex programs to stakeholders, using research to identify opportunities to articulate Microsoft's unique value proposition
• Lead strategic projects supporting the EVP & CRO agenda, with a focus on growth acceleration and ecosystem scale

AI-First Mindset & Innovation

• Apply AI and new ways of working to improve preparation, insight generation, follow-through, and the overall quality of executive engagements
• Work across SME&C, MCB, and the wider Microsoft organisation to identify, test, and adopt new ways to optimise processes, content, and programmes
• Act as a change agent for AI-enabled productivity across executive engagement workflows

Community Engagement

• Lead the SME&C CPE/Business Management community—driving clarity, alignment, and shared standards globally
• Foster effective collaboration across SME&C, MCB, and Corporate teams to ensure consistent messaging and prioritization
• Share and elevate best practices, creating repeatable frameworks for executive engagement excellence

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Operations, Finance, or related field AND 6+ years experience in program management, process management, or process improvement
  • OR equivalent experience. 

Business Program Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $116,900 - $203,600 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 $148,400 - $222,600 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

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.