Principal Construction Project Manager

Construction Planning and Logistics 

Construction - Knowledge of materials, methods, and the tools involved in the construction, repair, and engineering of buildings, houses, or other structures such as highways, roads, and bridges. 

Construction Consulting - The ability to provide management, risk-based advisory, dispute resolution and strategic communications services across all construction and engineering. 

Construction Management - Knowledge of specialized, project management techniques to oversee the planning, design, and construction of a project, from its beginning to its end. 

Construction Planning - The ability to plan how the team will manage and execute a construction project. 

Construction Processes - Knowledge of the design process (creating the description of a new facility, usually represented by detailed plans and specifications) and the construction planning process (identifying activities and resources required to make the design a physical reality). 

Scope Management - The ability to manage scope over the course of a project, including determining which changes are essential, estimating their impact on the project, ensuring that changes do not expand scope beyond acceptable levels, and keeping a change record to track progress. 

Financial Responsibility 

Budgeting - Knowledge of and the ability to develop and utilize budgeting guidelines, practices, and techniques, including forecasting. This may include the knowledge of the department's procedures and reporting systems to establish financial budget information at an appropriate organizational level. 

Construction Budgets - The ability to manage allotted funds for a specific building or remodeling project. The ability to anticipate all costs and expenses of the building process tracked through a form, tool, or spreadsheet. 

Construction Risk - The ability to identify and manage any exposure to possible loss. 

Cost Benefit - The ability to apply a systematic approach to estimating the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives (for example in transactions, activities, functional business requirements or projects investments) to determine options that provide the best approach to achieve benefits while preserving savings. 

Financial Analysis - Knowledge of and the ability to use basic financial analysis (e.g., return on investment, value chain analysis) related to marketing effectiveness, resource allocations, and new business opportunities. 

Project Cost - Knowledge of the process of identifying project resources, estimating costs, developing the budget, and managing the finances for a project. 

Managing Vendor and Stakeholder Relationships 

Conflict Resolution 

The ability to manage conflict, disharmony, and strife among people and situations, while recognizing and addressing sensitivities. 

Incident Handling - The ability to lead and direct others in the process of resolving escalated problems through communication. 

Influence Others - The ability to garner support for initiatives by gaining the respect of others and inspiring trust and confidence. 

Negotiation - The ability to achieve mutually satisfying agreements in negotiations with others by listening to their objectives, acting as the company's representative to effectively communicate the company's objective, and seeking common ground and collaborative solutions. 

Team Facilitation - The ability to lead and orchestrate cross-functional teams to complete objectives. This includes the skills of communicating and collaborating with others, leveraging resources and tools, and coordinating processes. 

Vendor Management - Knowledge of the process through which products and services are purchased for use by the corporation and the ability to identify, select, and manage vendors and suppliers who provide products and services to the company. This includes knowledge of the development of RFI's and RFP's and the ability to incorporate necessary technical requirements into contracts. 

Project Management and Judgement 

Change Management - The ability to define and implement procedures and/or technologies to deal with changes in the environment. This may include adapting to change, controlling change, and/or affecting change. 

Decision Making - The ability to make decisions in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment. This includes the ability to define, diagnose, and determine an appropriate resolution, recommendation, or decision while considering alternatives and factors (e.g., resources, costs, tradeoffs). 

Incident Management - The ability to identify, record, classify and apply a structured response process to manage incidents until the affected service is restored. Includes knowledge of the progression of an incident through occurrence of the incident, detection of the incident, diagnosis of the cause of failure, repair of the problem, recovery of the problem back to the live infrastructure and restoration of the service. 

Multitasking - The ability to process and attend to multiple types of information and/or perform multiple tasks simultaneously. 

Problem Solving - The ability to identify problems and review related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions. 

Project Management - Knowledge of and the ability to carry out the process of planning, organizing, and managing tasks and resources to accomplish a well-defined objective. This includes the ability to manage and provide project deliverables, optimize the contribution of the people involved, and assess the impact of project decisions on quality, productivity, schedules, cost, performance, etc. 

Project Planning - The ability to manage a project schedule, defining and sequencing activities, estimating activity durations, and developing and controlling the schedule. 

Vendor Selection and Evaluation - The ability to evaluate and select vendors who meet specifications and requirements. This includes knowledge of the development of RFI's and RFP's and the ability to incorporate necessary technical requirements into contracts. 

Other: 

Creativity - The ability to apply ingenuity, inventiveness, and imagination to the inclusive design and construction of a product, service, program, or initiative. 

Oral Communication - The ability to make a verbal message understood and to receive/understand messages during in-person or remote (e.g., telephone) interactions. 

Presentation Skills - The ability to prepare effective presentations in content and function, and to speak competently to the level of the audience. 

The Construction Project Manager delivers Microsoft’s datacenter capacity by leading high‑impact, multi‑stakeholder construction programs across U.S. campus and metro regions. This role ensures alignment to Microsoft standards for Safety, Security, Quality, Schedule, and Cost while driving program maturity, consistent execution frameworks, and coordination across Engineering, Operations, Security, and vendor teams.  

The  CPM represents CO+I and DCD as a senior individual contributor with broad influence across internal/external partners to ensure technical, operational, financial, and compliance goals are met. 

Impact & Scope -  CPMs operate autonomously, owning major program packages or multi‑building deployments. They influence cross‑functional teams, resolve blockers requiring deep judgment, and standardize practices that scale across regions or portfolios. This role shapes strategy for future delivery methods, creates repeatable processes, and uplifts execution quality across multiple sites. 

Core Success Measures  

• Delivery predictability across multiple concurrent builds 

• Cross‑functional alignment with Security, Engineering, Project Controls, and Operations 

• Cycle‑time reduction and consistency of program execution methodologies 

• Portfolio‑level adoption of best practices and standards 

• Vendor performance stability and audit readiness 

• Regional readiness for handover to Operations 

Working Conditions / Requirements 

• Ability to work on active construction sites and comply with PPE requirements 

• Ability to coordinate with teams across time zones 

• Experience leading multi‑building or campus‑scale construction programs 

• Experience influencing cross-functional design, engineering, or commissioning orgs 

• Demonstrated progression in leadership responsibility across large technical programs 

• Strong executive‑level communication experience (briefings, escalations, portfolio reporting) 

Competencies  

• Strategic Agility: Connects project execution to broader business and regional strategies 

• Enterprise Partnership: Builds alignment across Engineering, Operations, Security, and external authorities 

• Execution Excellence: Establishes repeatable methodologies supporting consistent delivery 

• Systems Thinking: Anticipates multi‑system interactions across construction, MEP, IT, and operations 

Microsoft Values Fit  

• Models a culture of Safety and Security in all decisions 

• Demonstrates a growth mindset, inclusion, collaboration, and customer obsession 

• Acts with integrity and sound judgment when resolving complex issues