Service Engineering Manager

Are you passionate about cloud computing, obsessed with customer experience, and driven to resolve complex issues under pressure? Do you thrive in high-stakes, live environments and want to play a pivotal role in ensuring the reliability of Microsoft's cloud platform? If so, the Azure Customer Experience (CXP) team has the opportunity for you.

Microsoft Azure is one of the most exciting and strategic products at Microsoft—powering mission-critical workloads for enterprises, governments, and startups around the world. Azure delivers on-demand, hyper-scale infrastructure and platforms via Microsoft's global data centers, enabling customers to build, host, and scale their applications with confidence.

The Customer Reliability Engineering (CRE) team within Azure CXP is a top-level pillar of Azure Engineering responsible for world-class live-site management, customer reliability engagements, modern customer-first experiences for scale, and drives deep customer insights and empathy into the broader Azure Engineering organization. Our "no dead-end's" philosophy ensures that every customer, regardless of size or scale, can realize their full potential through the Microsoft Cloud

The Azure Customer Experience (CXP) Customer Reliability Engineering (CRE) team is hiring a passionate and experienced Manager of Customer Communications to lead a global function consisting of communications professionals responsible for delivering timely, transparent, and high-impact messaging during Azure service incidents, maintenance events, and service retirements.

As a team manager, you will guide and support a high-performing group of communication leads who act as the voice of Microsoft during some of the most visible and sensitive customer scenarios. You'll work closely with incident commanders, engineering responders, product groups, and field stakeholders to ensure that every communication we deliver meets the highest standards of clarity, empathy, and accuracy.

This role is a unique opportunity to lead from the front—mentoring individuals, shaping global communication strategy, and influencing how Microsoft maintains customer trust through transparency. You will drive quality, accountability, and continuous improvement across our customer comms portfolio, while also supporting scalable communication frameworks and operational excellence across the platform.

• Lead and grow a global team of communications professionals responsible for real-time customer communications during Azure outages, security events, maintenance, and service retirement scenarios.
• Coach and mentor team members in high-pressure communication scenarios—helping them refine tone, messaging strategy, and execution under tight timelines.
• Oversee quality assurance for customer-facing messaging, ensuring consistency, accuracy, and empathy across all written communications during service-impacting events.
• Partner closely with incident managers, engineering leaders, and support teams to align on message content, cadence, and resolution timelines.
• Own the operational rhythm of the communications function, including on-call rotations, training programs, performance metrics, and coverage planning.
• Drive continuous improvement across communication processes and tooling—including playbooks, automation workflows, and templates for incident comms, maintenance events, and retirements.
• Serve as a key stakeholder in Post-Incident Reviews (PIRs), helping capture and act on feedback related to communication effectiveness, clarity, and customer impact.
• Advocate for customer empathy and transparency as core principles of Microsoft's live-site culture.
• Lead cross-team collaboration efforts to align messaging with field, support, legal, and executive stakeholders in high-profile or sensitive events.
• Help define success metrics and KPIs for communication performance, driving data-informed improvements and reporting out on team impact.

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of experience in a combination of, people management, customer communications, crisis communications, technical writing, or incident management roles in cloud or enterprise software environments.
• At least 2+ years of experience managing or leading high-performing teams in a fast-paced or operational setting.
• Proven ability to lead during high-stakes, ambiguous situations—maintaining composure, driving clarity, and inspiring confidence.
• Exceptional writing and editing skills, with the ability to coach others and elevate messaging quality at scale.
• Experience working with global stakeholders across engineering, support, and product disciplines.
• Deep understanding of cloud operations, live-site incident management, and customer engagement models.
• Familiarity with platforms like Azure Service Health, SHP, ICET, and other live-site tooling.
• Ability to navigate complex org structures and influence without direct authority.
• Strong cross-team collaboration and stakeholder management skills.
• Strategic mindset with a passion for mentoring and developing talent.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience managing comms or customer trust functions in a large-scale cloud provider or SaaS environment.
• Knowledge of incident response frameworks (e.g., ITIL) and post-incident analysis practices (RCAs, PIRs).
• Background in journalism, public relations, or technical writing.
• Familiarity with data analysis tools for evaluating communication metrics and team performance.
• Certifications in cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP), ITIL, or SRE principles.
• Experience leading global teams across time zones.

Why This Role Matters:

Every day, our customers stake their business and reputation on our cloud. You can help #AzCXP provide the clarity and confidence they need during moments of uncertainty. Join us in shaping the voice of Microsoft Azure in the eyes of the world.

#azcre #cxpcomms #azreliability

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. 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.

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