Principal Design Manager | Consumer

Microsoft AI Monetization is a customer-first organization dedicated to building the next generation of AI-powered products that serve our customers' business goals. Our Design, Research & Content team is a creative community on a mission to create and deliver holistic experiences for Advertisers, Publishers, Sellers and Consumers. By leveraging our deep understanding of the user and our business acumen, we are driving the future of advertising and monetization in the era of AI. Our diverse team works collaboratively to develop products and ideas which impact billions of customers worldwide.   

We’re a friendly, diverse and a fast-moving creative team, supporting one another to do the best work of our lives. We are always looking to break new ground with an unshakeable dedication to the user. We are proud of what we build, and how we build it. We prioritize quality, meaningful innovation and polish, and always root our decisions in research and evidence. We ship regularly, so your work will have real and immediate impact.   

This role will be part of our Monetization Design team,  which is focused on supporting the current and future monetization experiences for Microsoft Copilot, Bing (including Copilot Search), MSN, gaming, and other key consumer surfaces. You will work on everything from traditional advertising experiences, to future state explorations that leverages AI technology to redefine traditional ways of interacting with computers and the underlying business models for monetization. Your work will be at the heart of change within the advertising industry. 

Our core values guide our work: 

• Quality. We only deliver category-defining products that delight with their ease of use, guaranteed reliability, and beautiful, coherent design.      

• Simplicity. We don’t overcomplicate. Less is more, always.      

• Safety & Security. The highest standards of security, safety and responsibility are non-negotiable across all our business areas.      

• Evaluation. We pay close attention to signals and aren’t afraid to change course when data and our experience tells us to. We are also careful with our metrics, focusing on delivering long-term sustainable value (rather than short-term KPIs).    

• Kindness. Kindness is at the heart of our org and how we conduct ourselves. We care for, and support and respect one another, beginning again and learning every day.   

As aconsumer-focused Principal Design Manager, you will bring the technical skills, leadership and passion that will help us to build the next wave of monetization-centered capabilities for our consumers. You can drive the end-to-end process of setting a design vision and will enable your team to successfully innovative zero-to-one products. You have an abundance of positive energy, empathy, and kindness, in addition to being a highly effective communicator. You are flexible and adaptable, with the ability to move quickly to new methodologies, processes, technologies, and products. The right candidate takes the initiative and enjoys building world-class consumer experiences and products in a fast-paced environment. You pair this energy alongside a genuine commitment to being an exceptional manager who can create clarity and generate energy for their team, helping them to deliver results. You will set vision and provide creative direction along all parts of the design and product development lifecycle. You guide process, practice, and pixels in a way that elevates your team, your products, and our greater organization. 

As a design leader, you are critical to Microsoft’s mission 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.  

By applying to this U.S.  position, you are required to be local to the Redmond, WA or Bay Area and in office 3 days a week. 

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of world-class designers of all experience levels, supporting their professional growth and helping them to deliver amazing experiences. 

• Ship world-class AI-powered experiences that delight consumers with an emphasis on craft, quality, trust, and positive user and societal impact. 

• Stay aware of new technological innovations (especially within AI) and bring these into our products and design practices. Ensure your team is also building their awareness and comfort with these new technologies and exhibit their usage in their design practice. 

• Own the user experience for the product areas your team supports, applying the leadership necessary to ensure that user needs and behaviors are well understood, product requirements are aligned, and the designed experiences enable successful outcomes for their users. 

• Collaborate with other product leaders to manage the end-to-end product development process, and maintain accountability for user experience quality. 

• Exhibit cross-functional communication and dependency management, scoping, and scheduling for your team's work. 

• Find your own path to get things done despite roadblocks; ensure your team's work gets into the hands of users quickly and plan for continued iteration. 

• Establish and maintain mechanisms to share design work to gather feedback, create alignment, and enable implementation (i.e. engineering handoff).  

• Enlist support via exceptional storytelling; coach your team to grow and ensure they also deliver their work via effective storytelling. 

• Set the bar for excellence and quality, and hold the team accountable to that standard. 

• Enable and support your team as they work in a fast-paced, design-driven, product development cycle.    

• Partner with product teams to define goals and performance indicators - both business and customer success metrics. Set up and oversee experiments and evaluate effectiveness with data and research.    

• Collaborate effectively and communicate clearly with cross-functional teams from across the organization. This will include executive leadership, product teams, engineering, sales, and additional design teams. 

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 6+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 8+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR equivalent experience (e.g., demonstrated experience working in product or service design or using design thinking to solve problems)
• 3+ years people management experience.
• A portfolio or work samples that demonstrate the experience of your team(s) work, designing world class consumer products from vision through launch. Your direct creative direction should be evident in the work you share. 

Preferred Qualifications

• 6+ years people management experience.
• Proven track record of setting design vision for innovative products that require bold thinking and risk taking. 

• Experience prompting LLMs, working with generative AI, and understanding how to meaningfully integrate AI into products to help customers accomplish their goals. 

• Demonstrate high craft in design work; must demonstrate examples of how you value craft and helped your team translate vision into well-polished design solutions.   

• Ability to guide execution plans across multiple products; leading cross-functional teams to move ideas from conceptualization to implementation. 

• Experience that demonstrates your ability to drive design thinking within the products you support, influence design outcomes in which you and your team are proud to deliver, and discover and fix problems in fast-paced environments. 

• Experience identifying research needs, commissioning the appropriate support, and then amplifying the research findings such that they impact the product experience appropriately.  

• Ability to help your team operate successfully in a start-up like environment. This includes managing multiple priorities,  adapting to ever-changing requirements and deadlines, and helping your team to stay motivated amidst change. 

• Proven ability to collaborate and contribute to a positive, inclusive work environment, fostering knowledge sharing and growth within your team and beyond to key stakeholders and the organization.  

• Optional, but meaningful: engineering experience with HTML/CSS/JavaScript or other development languages, such that you are able to help troubleshoot technical limitations and enforce engineering accountability. 

Product Design M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 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 July 31st, 2025.

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.