Overview
With over 17,000 employees worldwide, the mission of the Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers achieve their business outcomes faster with technology that does more.
The Global Customer Success (GCS) organization is leading the effort to create the desired customer experience through support offer creation, driving digital transformation across our tools, and delivering operational excellence across CE&S.
Within CE&S, the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization builds trust and confidence for every person and organization through delivering a seamless support experience. In CSS, we help customers and partners resolve their issues quickly, prevent future problems from occurring, and demonstrate new ways to achieve more from their Microsoft investment.
Advocacy and Customer Trust (ACT) delivers connected support experiences to our customers to gain and keep their trust.
Our Service Manager will be positioned and aligned with Microsoft Partners, acting as a strategic operational lead to support their reactive support landscape and operational health across their customer base.
We create an environment where you can do your best work and build a career both in the Service Manager role as well as the wider Microsoft. As your interests and goals evolve, we will enable you to connect you with a diverse, thriving community that can help you grow.
In the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization we are looking for people with a passion for delivering customer success. As a Senior Support Escalation Manager, you will be the primary contact managing escalated customer and partner issues. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth, hone your problem-solving, collaboration and orchestration skills, and deepen your relationship management expertise.
This role is flexible in that you can work up to 50% from home.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
Responsibilities
Demonstrate deep expertise across the Microsoft ecosystem, including Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365, with the ability to navigate complex, multi-service environments and dependencies.
Demonstrate advanced troubleshooting expertise.
Operate at the forefront of a high-performance support organization, owning critical escalations, major incidents, and disaster recovery scenarios with full accountability for outcomes.
Lead resolution of high-severity incidents (Sev A / Sev 1), orchestrating global, cross-functional teams under intense time pressure while maintaining composure and decision clarity.
Act as a trusted advisor to C-level stakeholders, confidently driving executive-level conversations, setting expectations, and influencing strategic decisions during crisis and transformation scenarios.
Collaborate closely with Service Managers across Microsoft partner organizations globally, ensuring seamless coordination across regions, time zones, and operational boundaries to deliver consistent, high-quality support outcomes.
Establish strong governance with vendors and delivery partners, rigorously reviewing their support case analysis, enforcing quality standards, and driving continuous improvement to meet and exceed defined service expectations.
Lead and continuously evolve end-to-end escalation and incident management frameworks, ensuring operational excellence, repeatability, and scalability across the support ecosystem.
Translate highly complex technical issues into clear, business-aligned narratives, enabling both technical teams and executive leadership to make informed decisions.
Proactively identify systemic risks and recurring failure patterns through deep technical analysis and data-driven insights, driving long-term corrective actions.
Navigate and influence the Microsoft Partner ecosystem, identifying structural inefficiencies and leading targeted improvement initiatives while managing competing priorities.
Design and deliver high-impact partner engagements, including in-depth (multi-hour) strategic sessions focused on performance optimization, operational maturity, and experience improvement.
Travel onsite to engage directly with partner leadership, conducting executive briefings, and solution workshops to accelerate transformation and accountability.
Own end-to-end customer resolution strategy, serving as the single point of accountability for complex issues and ensuring alignment across engineering, operations, and external and internal stakeholders.
Drive continuous improvement by mentoring team members, shaping best practices, and contributing to strategic initiatives that elevate support excellence and reduce time-to-resolution.
Establish and maintain rigorous communication cadences, delivering precise, transparent updates to stakeholders while managing expectations in high-pressure environments.
Lead bi-monthly case review sessions with partners, delivering in-depth analysis of support cases, identifying systemic gaps, and driving actionable improvements to elevate support quality and operational maturity.
Collaborate deeply with engineering and operations teams to remove blockers, allocate critical resources, and accelerate resolution timelines for high-value partner accounts.
Anticipate and manage stakeholder expectations, ensuring proactive communication, escalation transparency, and outcome-driven execution.
Develop executive-level reporting, including trend analysis, post-incident reviews, and strategic insights that inform leadership decisions and drive systemic improvements.
Build and govern relationships with outsourced vendors and third-party providers, holding them accountable to performance standards and ensuring seamless collaboration during critical events.
Act as a driver and key influencer in developing and advancing proactive, value-driven services for the Partner ecosystem, with a focus on creating scalable paid service offerings, while also serving as a primary source for building and enriching practice content.
Qualifications
[Required Qualifications]:
- 9+ years of technology industry, customer service, or related experience
o OR Bachelor's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 6+ years of technology industry, customer service, or related experience
o OR Master's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 4+ years of technology industry, customer service, or related experience
o OR equivalent experience
Prior experience in incident and escalation management, or within a customer support organization.
Proficient in C-level stakeholder management
Fluent Japanese and Business English Required
Demonstrated experience in customer-facing roles, engaging effectively with both internal and external stakeholders.
Proven experience contributing to fast-paced projects
[Additional or Preferred Qualifications]:
Project management experience.
Experience working with Microsoft products and services.
Cloud Technology Certification (Azure Fundamentals. M365 Fundamentals)
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, read more about **requesting accommodations.**