Sales Design & Incentives (SDI) is the team responsible for the design, implementation, and operations of sales and incentive plans across Microsoft, impacting more than 40,000 employees. Our vision is to deliver best-in-class, end-to-end incentive compensation that inspires sales professionals to maximize their success and rewards while enabling sustainable growth, market share, and customer success.
Within SDI, the Operations & Regional Delivery (ORD) team supports a positive seller experience by delivering end-to-end operational excellence for incentive compensation at global scale. Through effective cross-functional partnerships, disciplined execution, and scalable solutions, ORD translates strategy and change into reliable operations that sellers and leaders can trust. By combining deep knowledge of regional realities with consistent operational rigor, Regional Engagement closes the loop between global program intent and seller experience—surfacing insights, mitigating risk, and driving operational excellence where it matters most.
The Senior Business Program Manager plays a key role in governing how deal-based exceptions are managed across SDI's RBI Plans and Incentive Programs — owning the end-to-end rhythm from intake through closure and partnering with the Americas and EMEA Time-Zone Leads to keep classification, logging, and decisions consistent and anchored to our One Microsoft, pay-for-performance, and no-precedent principles.
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
Deal-based exception management process owner
General orchestration, rhythm & reporting
Owns the end-to-end operating rhythm across both Revenue Based Incentives (RBI) Plans and Incentive Programs: intake, classification, routing, tracking, and closure.
Govern the SDI Exception Workflow — ensure cases are logged for review against the entry criteria
Decides when to activate the Deal-Based Escalation Committee (DBEC) as the Exception Review Board, set its cadence (rising into year-end), and bring only material/precedent-setting cases to SDI Leadership Team (LT).
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RBI escalations — partnering with the time-zone leads
Partner closely with Americas and EMEA TZ Leads on quota/revenue (RBI) escalations, providing one consistent classification and logging discipline across time zones.
Keep regional decisions aligned to the guiding principles (One Microsoft, pay-for-performance, source-data accountability, consistency / no precedent setting).
Incentive Programs escalations — direct ownership
Own Incentive Programs exceptions end-to-end, resolving with or without pulling in SDI SMEs.
Early detection at design stage — embed into program design reviews to flag exception-prone logic before launch, shifting the function from reactive to preventive.
Use the exceptions log to identify root causes, feeding upstream process improvements and, where needed, business-rule revisions (forward-looking, future-FY per charter).
Tighten the standardized classification framework and boundary enforcement to mitigate the charter's named risks (misclassification, mechanism overlap, unnecessary LT escalations).
Other
- Embody our culture and values
Qualifications
Required/minimum qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Economics, or related field AND 7+ years' experience in compensation, business management and operations, finance and analytics, human resources and people analytics, marketing, or sales strategy OR equivalent experience
Additional or preferred qualifications
- Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree or Master's Degree in Finance, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or related field.
- 5+ years of experience working in a large or highly matrixed organization, preferably in the technology industry.
- Prior experience with incentive compensation processes, including quota setting and related upstream inputs such as territory planning, segmentation, and account alignment.
- 3+ years of project or program leadership/management experience
- Executive presence with experience influencing and partnering with stakeholders across the business.
- Proven success navigating ambiguity, ramping quickly on new processes and business data, and resolving unstructured problems.
- Experience communicating incentive compensation updates and plan changes clearly to drive understanding and action at all organizational levels.
- Maintain effectiveness while managing shifting priorities and multiple concurrent deadlines.
Sales Compensation IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $116,900 - $203,600 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 $148,400 - $222,600 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, read more about requesting accommodations.
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