Overview
We are hiring a Director, Organization Development. This is a high-impact role for an organization development practitioner who can help shape how the People team works, leads, and delivers through one of its most consequential periods of transformation. The Director, Organization Development will bring strategic depth, practical judgment, and a bias for action—translating organizational theory, diagnostics, and data into clear choices, fast learning, and durable behavior change across leaders, teams, and systems.
This leader will partner with senior People leaders to make complex organizational opportunities easier to see, understand, and act on. They will diagnose where structures, decision rights, leadership practices, culture, capabilities, and ways of working are enabling progress—or getting in the way—and will turn those insights into interventions that leaders can actually use. Success requires someone who is as comfortable facilitating difficult executive conversations as they are building pragmatic roadmaps, sequencing change, and helping teams move from intent to execution.
The candidate will be energized by work that sits at the intersection of strategy, organization design, leadership effectiveness, culture, and change. They will bring credibility with senior leaders, OD experience, and a grounded understanding of what it takes to make transformation stick inside a large, global, matrixed company. Rather than offering theory alone, this leader will help the organization make better tradeoffs, align around the work that matters most, and build the capability to deliver with greater clarity, speed, and impact.
This role also includes management responsibilities and will require a leader who builds trust, develops talent, sets a high bar for quality and impact, and creates the conditions for others to do meaningful, transformative work.
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
Change Design and Orchestration
- Guides HR and business leaders through complex, large-system organizational transformation efforts with urgency, clarity, and sound judgment—helping teams quickly understand what matters most and where action is needed.
- Leads the creation of practical, end-to-end change plans that move from diagnosis to action quickly and responsibly. Develops communication, engagement, and implementation plans that improve business outcomes, manages schedules and budgets, evaluates progress, and adjusts the approach as new information emerges.
Leadership and Team Effectiveness
- Rapidly assesses leadership and team effectiveness issues, distinguishes signal from noise, and designs practical interventions that improve alignment, decision quality, accountability, and execution against strategic objectives.
- Connects leadership and team effectiveness work to the broader Microsoft ecosystem, using metrics and leader insight to monitor progress, identify risks early, and keep interventions focused on the outcomes that matter most.
Organizational Capability
- Provides timely organizational capability insights that inform strategic execution and decision making. Defines long-term capability needs while identifying near-term actions leaders can take to strengthen processes, talent, ways of working, and operating discipline.
Organizational Design
- Provides executive counsel on organizational models and system analyses, balancing thoughtful design with the need to make timely decisions and move work forward.
- Designs and leads organization design efforts—such as information flow, governance, goals and metrics, process redesign, restructuring, and culture activation—that make strategy easier to execute and improve organizational outcomes.
Organizational Diagnosis
- Engages business leaders to gather the right data quickly, validate organizational diagnostics, and determine what must be understood deeply versus what can be acted on now. Partners with peers and analytics teams to improve data quality, insight generation, and decision readiness.
- Partners across the People team to understand the full organizational system, pressure-test insights, and connect diagnostics to broader business, talent, culture, and technology implications.
- Applies rigorous diagnostic frameworks and data-based assessment techniques without letting analysis slow action. Synthesizes qualitative and quantitative information, identifies the highest-leverage insights, frames clear recommendations, and proposes OD interventions that can be implemented and measured.
- Identifies gaps, conflicts, and misalignments in strategy execution and leader or employee behaviors, then recommends practical corrections that help the organization stay aligned to its priorities.
Organizational System Consulting
- Builds a clear case for action, gains ownership for the path forward, and mobilizes internal and external resources with appropriate speed and discipline. Manages prioritization and resource allocation based on the work that will create the greatest organizational impact.
- Leads practical, action-oriented dialogues with People leaders about organizational needs, choices, and tradeoffs to drive adoption of recommendations. Works alongside HRBPs and direct reports to keep organization, culture, and leadership work active with leaders throughout the year.
- Contracts, leads, and coaches HR partners and direct reports to design cohesive intervention plans for complex situations—such as system redesign, leadership development, or strategic workforce planning—where technical, political, global, or adaptive dynamics must be managed.
- Provides coaching and targeted advisory support that strengthens leadership capability, accelerates diagnostic work, and enables OD interventions to take hold.
Strategy Clarity and Alignment
- Applies deep understanding of business goals, gaps, and opportunities to help executive teams quickly clarify strategy, make tradeoffs, align priorities, and translate direction into practical organizational choices that improve business results and culture.
- Monitors strategy clarity and solution alignment across the organization, surfaces tangible examples of misalignment, and guides leaders in making the choices needed to improve business and culture outcomes.
People Management
- Builds and leads a high-performing team by setting clear expectations, developing talent, modeling sound judgment, and creating an environment where people can move with ownership, speed, and accountability.
Other
- Embody our culture and values
Qualifications
Required/minimum qualifications
- Doctorate in Human Resources, Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Business, Organizational Development, or related field AND 7+ years experience in organizational development, human resources, business, or related experience
- OR Master's Degree in Human Resources, Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Business, Organizational Development, or related field AND 10+ years experience in organizational development, human resources, business, or related experience
- OR Bachelor's Degree in Human Resources, Psychology, Business, Organizational Development, or related field AND 12+ years experience in organizational development, human resources, business, or related experience
- OR experience in organizational development, human resources, business, or related equivalent experience.
- 8+ years formal or informal leadership experience.
- 3+ years people management experience.
Additional / Preferred Qualifications
- 9+ years of experience across consulting, program design, organizational design, strategic planning/execution, change management, Human Resource Business Partner (HRBP), Human Resources (HR), or equivalent experience.
- 10+ years of formal or informal leadership experience.
- 5+ years of people management experience.
Organization Development M6 - 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:
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.