Principal Data Scientist Manager

Overview Cloud Operations + Innovation (CO+I) is the team behind one of the World’s largest Cloud Infrastructures, responsible for powering all Microsoft online Products and Services as well as powering Microsoft’s “Cloud First” mission. Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide, and we are looking for passionate, high energy program managers to help achieve that mission. If you want to have fundamental impact on how Microsoft’s Cloud is deployed and operated globally, want to be involved with one of the most strategically important teams at Microsoft, have strong technical and business acumen, leadership, creativity, and out of the box thinking are some of the skills you bring to the table - this job is for you! We are seeking a Principal Data Scientist Manager to define and lead the analytics strategy, executive reporting, governance, and AI innovation for a critical data center utilization and power reclamation function. The successful candidate will establish trusted metrics, connect fragmented planning and execution signals, identify systemic opportunities, and provide decision intelligence for senior leadership. This role has global scope and requires cross-organizational leadership across capacity planning, engineering, deployment, finance, operations, and product teams. It is a full-time Microsoft employee position because it requires authoritative metric ownership, sustained strategic accountability, access to business-critical context, and deep institutional and datacenter domain expertise that cannot be effectively provided by vendor resources. In this role, the successful candidate will partner closely with key business and engineering leaders to drive programs focused on transforming how we serve our customers. These programs will be on the leading edge of innovation and will include driving pilots and other experiments that shape ongoing strategy in delivering datacenters efficiently. You balance strong analytical and technical skills with the ability to influence decision makers within the CO+I leadership and execution teams spread across the rest of Azure. You will also partner very closely with related teams including planning, supply chain, operations, and software. Responsibilities • Define the analytics vision, operating model, and multi-year roadmap for the critical data center utilization and power reclamation function • Own the authoritative measurement framework for power reclamation function, including metric definitions, targets, attribution, forecasts, and executive narratives • Lead development and governance heatmaps, metrics, trackers, alerting, etc. • Establish data contracts, lineage, quality controls, reconciliation standards, and decision rights across capacity, power, network, reservation, deployment, and financial data • Identify portfolio-level risks and opportunities, quantify business impact, and drive decisions with senior leadership and partner organizations • Design predictive, prescriptive, and AI-assisted solutions that improve capacity placement, reservation management, anomaly detection, forecasting, and operational responsiveness • Set technical standards for scalable data products, semantic models, experimentation, performance, reliability, and responsible AI • Lead complex cross-functional initiatives where requirements, ownership, and source-system definitions are ambiguous or evolving • Communicate strategy, progress, tradeoffs, and recommendations through concise executive reporting and business reviews • Provide technical direction and mentorship to data scientists, analysts, and engineers, raising the organization's analytical maturity • Embody our Culture and Values Qualifications Required Qualifications: • Doctorate in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results) • OR Master's Degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results) • OR Bachelor's Degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 7+ years data science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results) • OR equivalent experience • 3+ years people-management experience Other Requirements: Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. Preferred Qualifications: • Bachelor's degree in data science, computer science, statistics, engineering, operations research, or a related field AND 10+ years of data science, analytics, data engineering, or related experience, OR equivalent experience • Master's degree or doctorate in data science, computer science, statistics, engineering, operations research, or a related field • 7+ years of experience with SQL and analytical programming using Python, R, or a comparable language • 5+ years of experience leading complex, cross-functional data or analytics programs from strategy through production adoption • Experience owning executive metrics, OKRs, governance, forecasting, or decision-support systems for large-scale operational programs • Experience influencing senior leaders and establishing alignment across organizations with competing priorities and ambig