Overview

Microsoft’s Cloud business is experiencing explosive growth, and the Capacity, Supply Chain & Provisioning (CSCP) organization is responsible for enabling the infrastructure underlying this growth. Our mission is to deliver the world’s computer with an industry-leading supply chain. CSCP is responsible for strategic sourcing, customer demand forecasting, capacity planning and management, supply chain planning and execution, capacity provisioning, and decommissioning and dispositioning of datacenter assets worldwide.

The Microsoft Sourcing is an exciting and fast evolving engineering group within Microsoft. CS4 (Cloud Sourcing, Spares, Sustainability, & Security) mission is to optimize and deliver industry leading cloud infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft’s online services used by our Customers around the world. The organization is responsible for strategy and delivery of the foundational platform for all Microsoft Online Services including Ecosystem guidance, sourcing strategies, capacity availability, and technology recommendations across the entire supplier ecosystem. CS4 supports over 200 online businesses including Bing, O365, One Drive, Xbox and Windows Azure branded services. The Network Sourcing CS4 team is responsible for sourcing network and optical components in the CS4 organization. This team’s focus is guiding supplier partners congruence to Microsoft’s vision and principles to create the best experience for Microsoft’s customers.

Position Description:
The Sustaining Optics Sourcing manager will be responsible for category management and supplier relationships in Azure’s cloud business. We are looking for an individual who is eager to impact and guide the industry, be highly motivated / self-driven, and be passionate in driving continuous and open about new business and technology trends. The individual must have the ability to collaborate and create internal and external clarity, have technical and business acumen in the networking and system engineering field, and can guide supplier relationships in a highly dynamic and fast paced environment. This requires the ability to learn the organization quickly, have strong storyboarding and influencing skills as well as develop and nurture relationships with key stakeholders, while driving impact and change to the business.

Qualifications

Qualifications
• Self-Starter with inquisitive nature – willing and able to actively identify opportunities for improvement in a dynamic and often ambiguous environment and while providing structure and organizational leadership to drive transformational change.
• Critical thinking with the ability to connect and execute high level strategies to operational level deliverables, as well as the impact of changes in either direction
• Ability to present negotiation strategy at management level, recommended negotiation positions and successfully negotiate with vendors to achieve desired positions.
• Strong Communication and collaboration skills – strong written and verbal communications. Ability to document and speak to business requirements for both technical and business consumption
• Team player – leverage and contribute effectively to the work of others, able to be part of the team in a larger scope of projects
• Basic knowledge and experience in supply chain environmental compliance & supply chain security
• Understand the value drivers and negotiate with modular switches and switch suppliers
• Capable of understanding the manufacturing flow and determine which is the true capacity, facilitate supply shortage deep dive and work with team for material pull in

Basic requirements
• Bachelor's degree required; Masters preferred
• 3 or more years in one of the following disciplines: Optics, or Enterprise/Cloud hardware sourcing, application engineering, business, or product line management
• Understanding of hardware cost modeling

Experience required
• Experience in and understanding of Networking/Cloud hardware supply chain & manufacturing processes
• Supply chain/materials & delivery management experience
• Experience working with suppliers on a global scale

Responsibilities

Responsibilities
• Support, facilitate, and execute network category sourcing strategy inclusive of supplier selection/development, Industry and supplier trend analysis, supplier relationship management, contract negotiation and execution, and other key success criteria
• Support data and be part of the team to foster the partnership with engineering & business partners to identify/influence design and technology selection
• Guide industry to anticipate and execute roadmaps in congruence with Microsoft’s roadmaps and direction
• Drive supplier overall performance in terms of technology and support, Continuity and assurance of supply, quality, cost and overall capability to enable Microsoft’s success
• Ensure execution of robust negotiation strategies and cost targets through understanding of market dynamics, benchmarks and cost trends. Create forward looking cost projections for mass production products and measure supplier’s performance to actuals
• Serve as the supplier relationship manager overall for managed categories.