Director Talent Management

About the role

The Talent Management Director architects and governs Microsoft’s CoreAI Talent Management strategy to enable leadership excellence and build a future-ready engineering organization. Operating at the intersection of strategy, innovation, execution, and leadership development, this role ensures high-impact talent decisions that directly support business performance, outcomes, and long-term competitive advantage.

As a strategic partner to the EVP of CoreAI, senior Engineering leaders, and Human Resources leadership, this role sets talent direction, establishes decision frameworks, and enables leaders to grow, move, and retain talent at scale. This leader serves as a catalyst for Microsoft’s future-ready talent model—shaping how talent is identified, developed, deployed, and sustained across a complex, global engineering ecosystem.

Responsibilities

• Enterprise Talent Strategy & Outcomes
  • Define and govern Talent Management strategy for Microsoft CoreAI, ensuring alignment with business priorities, growth plans, and future capability needs.
  • Establish enterprise decision frameworks and guardrails for succession, talent movement, leadership development, and readiness—enabling consistent, high-quality talent decisions across CoreAI and Engineering.
  • Translate business strategy into measurable talent outcomes, shifting focus from process execution to decision quality, bench strength, and leadership readiness.
  • Ensure talent investments directly support engineering productivity, scale, and long-term sustainability in a rapidly evolving threat environment.
• Program Architecture, Governance & Execution Through Others
  • Own the design, evolution, and governance of core talent programs (succession, leadership development, talent movement), moving beyond implementation to enterprise activation and scale.
  • Set clear success measures, decision rights, and operating expectations; hold delivery teams and partners accountable for outcomes.
  • Enable execution through Centers of Excellence, HR Business Partners, and business leaders—rather than directly managing delivery.
  • Ensure integration across Talent, Learning, and Organizational Development ecosystems while preventing fragmentation or duplicative effort.
• Strategic Consulting, Influence & Storytelling
  • Serve as a trusted advisor to the EVP of CoreAI and senior Engineering leadership, influencing critical talent decisions with data-driven insights and enterprise perspective.
  • Represent Microsoft’s long-term interests by balancing immediate business needs with sustained leadership and capability health.
  • Communicate talent strategies and implications clearly at the executive level—translating complexity into crisp recommendations and decision options.
  • Elevate the talent conversation from “who and where” to capability, readiness, and future leadership supply.
• Analytics, Innovation & Decision Tools
  • Leverage business priorities, bench strength assessments, workforce data, growth projections, and AI-enabled insights to diagnose risk and opportunity across the leadership pipeline.
  • Sponsor and guide the design of AI-native talent diagnostics, models, and tools that improve forecasting, benchmarking, and enterprise decision quality at scale.
  • Identify systemic gaps in how talent decisions are made and drive solutions that shift leaders from intuition-led judgments to AI-informed, human-accountable decisions.
  • Ensure talent data and AI insights are trusted, explainable, and embedded in the rhythm of business decision making—with clear ownership and accountability for outcomes.
• Change Leadership & Culture Integration
  • Lead enterprise-level change strategies to evolve talent management in line with Microsoft CoreAI’s scale, pace, and mission.
  • Embed Microsoft’s cultural attributes, leadership principles, and management excellence frameworks as explicit decision standards, not aspirational inputs.
  • Hold leaders accountable for applying culture and leadership principles consistently across succession, development, and movement decisions.
  • Act as a culture amplifier—reinforcing inclusive, agile, and future-focused leadership behaviors through talent systems.
  • Build/deepen Talent Management capability of the HRBP teams.

Qualifications

• Required/Minimum Qualifications
  • Bachelor's Degree in Human Resources, Business, or related field AND 10+ years experience in HR practices or program/project management
  • OR 15+ years experience in HR practices or program/project management
  • 5+ years managing large-scale or complex projects/programs
• Additional or Preferred Qualifications
  • Master's Degree in Human Resources, Business, Organization Development, Psychology, or related field
  • Demonstrated success partnering with executive stakeholders to drive outcome-oriented talent decisions.
  • Experience operating within global, matrixed engineering or product organizations.
  • Track record of shaping enterprise talent models, governance, and decision frameworks.

Pay

The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $130,900 - $277,200 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 $165,600 - $303,600 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.