Program Manager II - Dynamics

Job Category: Software Engineering: Program Management
Location: Bellevue, WA, US
Job ID: 827197-105048
Division: Human Resources

Overall Scope/Impact
- Are you passionate about solving hard customer challenges that directly result in an impact to their bottom line?
- Are you passionate about bridging the gap between consumers and enterprise in building compelling applications that will be a game changer?
- Do you love to design, develop and evangelize products that have a broad impact and clear strategic value to Microsoft?
- Do you work well with product team leadership and with internal/external partners?
- Do you want to be a part of a rapidly emerging billion-dollar business for Microsoft?

If so, this might be the right role for you.

Microsoft Dynamics AX is a complete ERP solution targeted towards mid-sized and enterprise businesses worldwide and that offers a rich, flexible platform. Dynamics AX leverages the complete Microsoft technology stack to its fullest potential to transform the way customers manage their business. Our team has the vision to build a complete end-to-end Multi-Channel solution for Retail industry that streamlines sales to supply processes as well as offer integrated sales channel management including brick and mortar stores, e-commerce, mobile, social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter), as well as 3rd party marketplaces (Amazon, eBay etc.). The Retail solution mission combines On-premise and Cloud offerings that offer rich capabilities, best of breed UX as well as superior customization and extensibility model across all the solution components including Retail Headquarters, Store Systems including Point of Sale solution, e-Commerce web storefront, Back office supply chain modules as well as integration components. Microsoft Dynamics AX was been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the Gartner Inc. Magic Quadrant for Midmarket ERP and earned the recognition from Forrester Research Inc. as Leader in The Forrester Wave: Order Management Hubs. This is a fast growing solution with presence in 38+ countries with considerable momentum in market.

We have a mature leadership team with a strong track record of delivering world class software. You'll work across the organization to fulfill product goals and requirements, drive the deliverables, and coordinate the overall project/release plan. You must be able to work in a fast paced, agile environment on short release cycles. We have a great collaborative atmosphere and fantastic team spirit.

THE MARKET

Mid-Market and Enterprise segments represent the fastest growing opportunity worldwide for business applications. These segments are quite fragmented with no clear leader and that represents great opportunity for Microsoft. We are pursuing this quite aggressively across the company and Dynamics AX is well positioned to win here by leveraging Microsoft stack all up as well as unique value proposition that we can provide to partners and customers. By focusing on key industries (and prioritized micro-verticals), GTM efforts tailored by industry, and launching the solution worldwide, we believe we can make significant in-roads quickly, build rich eco-system and become the default' choice to win.

OWNERSHIP & IMPACT

Responsibility of this position is to help design the product to enable end-to-end scenarios of mid-market and enterprise retailers worldwide. The designs should help overcome and eliminate the challenges of retailers and to provide our customers and partners with prescriptive guidance regarding how best to leverage the Dynamics AX for Retail to focus on their business needs, rather than on technology. In this role, you will need to work closely with Engineering teams, as well as Product Planning, Product Management to ensure that the needs of the target market are thoroughly understood and integrated in future product releases. In addition, you will be assigned broad areas of the solution to drive for a given set of releases and you will drive scenario definition, prioritization, creating functional specifications and drive the scenario teams for successful delivery throughout the release. You will also have opportunities to work with strategic customers and partners to ensure we get feedback on proposed designs/implementation early. You will have opportunity to work closely with customers through TAP and Beta program and drive the feedback we get into meaningful and appropriate changes for the current release as well as drive prioritization for future releases. Getting our internal teams (sales, pre-sales, solution specialists, marketing, support) ready for any upcoming release is of significant importance as it represents one of the most critical parts that will allow us to scale and grow our business. To this effect, you will be involved in creating training and other readiness materials for the internal teams as well as deliver them via in-person/webcast to ensure folks are ready and prepared for the launch of the solution. The position requires that you understand and work well with Microsoft representative and Partners in the field and that you can navigate and understand both the customer and field perspectives and process. You will also have opportunities to work across key divisions at Microsoft (eg, Office, Bing, Windows Phone) to bring together compelling scenarios for retailers through iterative proof of concepts and bring them into mainstream products.
This role requires an individual with very strong technology, communication, negotiation, and project management skills who can manage and enable the success of the projects without direct authority.

THE IDEAL CANDIDATE (YOU)
The ideal candidate is a Technical Program Manager with at least 3-5 years of experience, with a track record of designing and shipping products/projects. You should have:

A strong background as a program manager, driving features from start to finish - definition, scope/prioritization, creating functional specs, driving feature teams, incorporating feedback and all the way to shipping. Experience in shipping multiple versions of software highly desired.
Fundamental belief and understanding of scenario driven development with strong focus on ensuring end-to-end scenarios work seamlessly with world class UX
A strong technical understanding and experience development environment (SQL, .NET, C#, ASP.NET, SSRS, HTML, XML) and the ability to comprehend and communicate systems architecture; knowledge of the Dynamics AX Platform is a plus.
Experience in formulating and developing solutions around SharePoint is a strong plus.
Background in Business applications space, especially in Retail Industry and/or Online Services, will be a strong plus.
Working experience in program management, consulting/implementation of ERP (Microsoft Dynamics and/or other competitors like SAP, Oracle, Epicor etc.) will be valuable
Ability to work both independently and in a multi-disciplinary team environment
Ability to analyze ambiguous technical and customer situations and to determine appropriate solutions as necessary
Excellent communication skills and the ability to clearly articulate customer requirements and pain points to executives and to a feature crew
B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent experience is required

MBD-Eng