Director Business Management, Global Channel Sales

Overview

With a vision to "Build and sell intelligent cloud and intelligent edge solutions with partners, empowering people and organizations to achieve more," Global Channel Partner Sales (GCPS) is responsible for driving revenue outcomes with partners through innovative solutions–at scale!

The Global Channel Sales (GCS) organization within GCPS is responsible for driving partner growth through TAM capture, accelerating cloud and AI adoption at scale, and enabling partner success. Our approach centers on CSP acceleration, co-sell execution, and performance accountability, ensuring measurable impact through partner-led transformation.

About the role—Director Business Management

The Global Channel Sales organization is seeking a strategic, results-driven leader to serve as Director of Business Management. This role is central to driving operational excellence, financial stewardship, executive and internal organization communications, and organizational effectiveness across a global business that impacts hundreds of partners worldwide.

As Director of Business Management, you will partner closely with the GCS Chief of Staff and leadership team to lead business planning and financial management, including fiscal year OPEX and headcount planning, budget forecasting and management, and proactive resource optimization.

You will oversee talent management, ensuring seamless hiring processes, accurate headcount tracking, and effective onboarding experiences that set new team members up for success.

In addition, you will lead executive and internal communications, crafting compelling narratives for leadership including the Global Channel Sales Corporate Vice President, while maintaining clarity and consistency across all communication channels.

Driving operational excellence will be a core focus—leading governance processes, program management, and strategic initiatives as assigned that enable operational efficacy, compliance, and continuous improvement.

This role requires a highly collaborative, people-centric leader who thrives in ambiguity, demonstrates strong business acumen, and can influence across all levels of the organization. The ideal candidate combines strategic thinking with operational rigor and is passionate about delivering measurable impact in a fast-paced, global environment.

Responsibilities

Business Planning & Financial Management

• Fiscal Year OPEX and Headcount Planning

Drive the annual planning process for operational expenses (OPEX), discretionary expenses (training, morale, travel, computer) and headcount. Ensure timely development, submission, and alignment with organizational priorities. Partner with GCS Chief of Staff and Leadership team to draft Future State org design updates.

• Budget Planning and Management

Collaborate across teams to define, manage, and report on budgets and quarterly forecasts for the global organization in compliance with company standards. Deliver bi-weekly reporting to the Leadership Team (LT) and proactively identify opportunities to redeploy underspend toward top business priorities within the quarter.

Talent Management & Organizational Design

• Employee Headcount Management and Tracking

Oversee end-to-end hiring and backfill processes in alignment with GCPS and Microsoft policies. Partner with hiring managers to request backfills or new hires within approved headcount guidance and organizational taxonomy. Track weekly hiring activity and provide updates to the GCS LT, ensuring timely closure of open roles.

• Organization Design and Onboarding

Manage organizational blueprint updates and design changes. Ensure new hires are welcomed and set up for success by coordinating onboarding activities, announcements, and activation on collaboration tools and internal communication channels.

Communications

• Executive Communications

Lead executive communications for the GCS Vice President, including strategy and execution across internal and partner-facing presentations, events, and communication vehicles. Responsibilities include content development, speech writing, LinkedIn presence management, and ensuring consistent messaging across all channels.

• Internal GCS Communications

Manage the communications review and approval process for content originating from subject matter experts (SMEs) or other organizations intended for distribution by the GCS VP. Ensure accuracy, alignment with organizational priorities, and adherence to tone and branding guidelines.

Coordinate internal Microsoft, SME&C or GCPS communications, including announcements, updates, awards recognition, and messaging across teams, to maintain clarity and consistency.

Operational Excellence

• Business Operations and Governance

Drive operational excellence through program management and strategic initiatives. Ensure compliance with governance standards, including processes for training, purchasing, and hiring

Qualifications

Required / Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in relevant field (e.g., Liberal Arts, Business Administration, Management, Computer Science) AND 8+ years experience in financial management, business planning, operations management, strategy, project management, human resources, or business-related roles OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated track record of success in business leadership, marketing and program and/or project management
• Experience in sales and marketing strategy, communication strategy, and business and program development and management. Preferred understanding of Microsoft’s go-to-market strategies
• Proven people-centric leader and people manager: Able to thrive in a developmentally minded, relationship-based environment. 4+ years of people management experience, building, developing, and retaining top professional talent, modeling diversity and inclusion behaviors.
• Passionate, results-driven and organized approach, with an attention to detail: A self-starter who can create and deliver scalable plans from concept to delivery, including an ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects, effectively driving to measurable results. The ability to work cross-team in ambiguous and changing environments, along with great listening and partnering skills.
• Engagement expertise: Storytelling skills and passion for delighting partners, advocating on their behalf, creating great partner experiences, and understanding the linkage between these experiences and business success.
• Global leadership at scale, influence without authority: Experience leading/navigating large cross-functional teams is a critical skill for success.
• Disruptive Innovation: Incremental change is the enemy of disruptive innovation. Comfortable challenging the status quo by proposing innovative approaches and believe the best way to dispute an approach is to suggest a different one. Realizes that the best solutions are built with others, not in competition with them. Brings demonstrated experience proposing, creating, and managing executive level proposals and presentations.
• Leading change that drives adoption: Experience with large-scale transformations and know that driving change is about bringing people, partners, and customers along on the journey, not telling them where to go.
• Critical thinking and strategic insight based on data: Knows that ego is no match for data, so data is the North Star. Will challenge assumptions and current practices with a data-driven approach.
• Business Acumen: The ability to understand the parts of the business and their interrelationships. This includes skill in understanding the industry, competition, and expected future developments and challenges, the business's competitive strengths and weaknesses, opportunities to grow the business and awareness of the environment for opportunities.
• Executive Relations: The ability to interact confidently with senior leaders in a highly-matrixed organization to present/defend/clarify concerns or issues regarding an existing project, program, or solution. This includes the ability to confidently address difficult questions, handle push back from a high-level audience, and maintain an executive demeanor while engaging in difficult or sometimes high-pressure situations.

Business Management IC6 - 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. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances.

If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process.