IT on the cutting edge: Working in Microsoft Digital in the era of AI

What’s it like to power the systems behind a global technology leader from the inside?

Working in Microsoft Digital, the company’s internal IT organization, means being part of a group that operates at massive scale, deploying and managing the technology solutions that enable the company to collaborate, achieve, and fully embrace its shift to a Frontier Firm.

“Being successful in today’s fast-paced environment requires more than technical expertise. Success comes from embracing change, adapting quickly, and continuously learning alongside others. The most impactful teams combine technical capability with curiosity, collaboration, and a mindset of continuous evolution.”

Miguel Uribe, principal PM manager, Microsoft Digital

Our work touches on nearly every aspect of the business, from the network our employees rely on to safely connect to corporate resources, to the productivity apps they rely on every day, to the devices that power our global enterprise. We’re also key to the internal deployment and adoption of agentic AI tools for a global workforce of over 200,000 people.

Microsoft Digital employees have the daily opportunity to tackle complex, real‑world challenges while shaping how Microsoft develops new technologies, serving as Customer Zero for the company’s use of its own products and services.

“Being successful in today’s fast-paced environment requires more than technical expertise,” says Miguel Uribe, a principal PM manager in Microsoft Digital. “Success comes from embracing change, adapting quickly, and continuously learning alongside others. The most impactful teams combine technical capability with curiosity, collaboration, and a mindset of continuous evolution.”

The path to Microsoft Digital

Managing the full breadth of IT responsibilities at an organization the size of Microsoft requires a workforce with a diverse range of perspectives and lived experiences. Accordingly, the people who work here possess a wide variety of backgrounds and skill sets, and hail from around the world.

Networking and relationship-building are often helpful in finding your way into the organization. Mykhailo Sydorchuk, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital, started his career in Ukraine at a SharePoint solution startup with some prominent global customers. After a successful implementation with one of them, he built a strong relationship with a manager there.

When that person’s company later opened up a SharePoint role, Sydorchuk applied, was hired, and relocated to Los Angeles. He wore many hats in the job, serving as a SharePoint administrator, Microsoft 365 tenant administrator, developer, and project manager for internal IT rollouts and large-scale change management efforts.

Eventually, he was ready for a change.

“My colleague eventually joined Microsoft,” Sydorchuk says. “She felt I would be a good fit and suggested I apply. I went through the interview process and landed the role here about six years ago. So, I got the job very much through networking.”

Some employees at Microsoft Digital have an extensive work history, while others are just getting started in their careers.

“The internship structure is very supportive. Interns are given broad, open‑ended problems rather than tightly scoped tasks, which allows for deeper exploration.”

Jeni Huang, product designer, Microsoft Digital

Internships offer a great opportunity for many candidates who are new to the job market, giving them a way to get a foothold at the company. Microsoft hires thousands of interns each year globally, with year-to-year fluctuations based on hiring conditions and program scope. Within that broader program, design interns are part of a smaller, close-knit cohort, making mentorship and studio connections especially meaningful.

“The internship structure is very supportive,” says Jeni Huang, a product designer in Microsoft Digital who started with the company as an intern in 2022. “Interns are given broad, open‑ended problems rather than tightly scoped tasks, which allows for deeper exploration.”

In Huang’s early work as an intern at the company, she was encouraged to explore more forward-thinking design concepts rather than incremental improvements. That freedom helped her build strong relationships with her manager and others working in the design studio.

“Even though I’m now on a different team, many of the same people remain,” Huang says. “Those connections played a big role in my return as a full‑time Microsoft employee.”

Interesting, impactful work

The people who work at Microsoft Digital routinely tackle ambitious, forward‑thinking projects, with an eye toward reimagining how IT operates at a global scale. Our teams focus on building intelligent, AI‑powered employee experiences, using cloud-native platforms and data-driven insights to simplify work, boost productivity, reduce friction, and help everyone at the company do their best work.

“Microsoft, even after a long and storied history, remains one of the best places for employees to thrive professionally and personally. Experimenting and innovating are at our core—managers are encouraged to provide the time and space for innovation, and to celebrate both successes and learnings.”

Andrew Osten, general manager, business operations and programs, Microsoft Digital

Many of our projects involve large-scale automation, modernizing legacy systems, and embedding responsible AI into everyday workflows, including personalized self‑service technologies, adaptive productivity tools, and predictive insights for decision making. This environment creates a feeling of autonomy for employees and allows them to make significant impact.

“Microsoft, even after a long and storied history, remains one of the best places for employees to thrive professionally and personally,” says Andrew Osten, general manager for business operations and programs in Microsoft Digital. “Experimenting and innovating are at our core—managers are encouraged to provide the time and space for innovation, and to celebrate both successes and learnings.”

Microsoft Digital employees work on front-line technologies that matter. Their efforts serve as living case studies for Microsoft products, testing them in real-world conditions before they reach our customers. The result is a portfolio of work that combines innovation, pragmatism, and long-term thinking.

“We run hackathons sessions like ‘Fix, Hack, Learn,’ where we train ourselves on new technologies and then actively experiment,” Osten says. “That’s one of the most exciting parts of working here: We’re always pushed to explore the latest and greatest technologies and find real value in them.”

The pace can be fast and intense, but it offers the opportunity to work at the cutting edge and be part of transformative software releases. Innovative products result from being given the time and trust to invest and iterate.

“Open-mindedness and flexibility are critical here,” Sydorchuk says. “Technology evolves too quickly to get attached to specific ideas or scopes. Constant change is the norm, and learning to live with uncertainty is essential.”

Customer Zero: Our defining mission

A central component to working in Microsoft Digital is our role as Customer Zero. This concept describes how we use our own products and services internally before releasing them to customers, subjecting them to security, compliance, and productivity demands at an enterprise-level organization.

“Because we deploy these products internally at scale, we learn a tremendous amount, especially since many of these capabilities are early-stage or newly released.”

Andrew Osten, general manager, business operations and programs, Microsoft Digital

This approach surfaces functionality gaps, risks, and usability issues early, turning internal teams into live stress tests for new technologies before they are released to customers. Customer Zero helps ensure our products are resilient, fit for purpose, trustworthy, and grounded in real-world needs, not idealized scenarios. Just as importantly, these practices help create repeatable governance, adoption, and change strategies that customers can reuse, translating internal learning directly into external value.

“Because we deploy these products internally at scale, we learn a tremendous amount, especially since many of these capabilities are early-stage or newly released,” Osten says. “Our role is to generate energy and interest, help teams adopt the tools in ways that deliver real value, and then capture those learnings.”

Customer Zero means that Microsoft Digital functions differently from a typical IT organization, even though we’re still on point for the fundamentals, like keeping the network and its related infrastructure running safely and securely, managing the tenant, providing IT support, driving deployment and adoption, and ensuring our employees have the right tools, devices, and AI-powered services to succeed in a complex global enterprise.

What makes us unique is that we get access to ground-breaking new Microsoft products, features, and capabilities first. We provide early feedback, are the first to try out new experiences, and validate them at enterprise scale.

“We’re often operating at the edge,” Osten says. “For example, I’m currently using early-stage hardware and agentic technologies that haven’t been released yet for general availability, to both provide product feedback and drive value realization as soon as possible. Years ago, through our internal dogfooding program called Elite, I was using a next‑generation Xbox before it launched publicly. Those experiences are part of how we learn about and improve our products.”

Growing AI-based skills

A good example of something truly transformative to emerge from Microsoft Digital recently was our enterprise‑wide deployment and operationalization of Microsoft 365 Copilot—acting as Customer Zero for generative AI technology at scale.

Rather than treating Copilot as a productivity add‑on, we led a full reinvention of how knowledge work happens at the enterprise level. Building everything from governance and data-hygiene standards to role‑based adoption models and change management playbooks, we went all out to change employee habits and safely embed AI into daily workflows across the company.

“AI is behavioral,” Osten says. “To get real value, we work closely with business units to understand the problems they’re trying to solve, map those processes, identify where people can focus on higher-value work, and then build and drive adoption of agents to support that shift.”

In essence, Microsoft Digital is engaged in building an entire business model with AI serving as a governed, trusted, role-aware layer of intelligence. The company refers to this as the Frontier Firm concept, combining human judgment with AI agents—tools that can reason, plan, and execute tasks across systems.

“Building agents just because we can isn’t the goal. The goal is value. Microsoft Digital plays a key role in identifying the right problems, ensuring the right tools are available, and scaling solutions responsibly, so we’re solving problems while not creating new ones.”

Aisha Hasan, principal product manager, Microsoft Digital

The work Microsoft Digital does to conceive, build, and incorporate agents falls under a company-wide initiative known as Microsoft Agent 365. It focuses on three broad questions:

• What problems are we trying to solve?
• How can we build AI agents and workflows to solve them?
• How do we manage and scale this work without creating sprawl or duplicative solutions?

“Building agents just because we can isn’t the goal,” says Aisha Hasan, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital. “The goal is value. Microsoft Digital plays a key role in identifying the right problems, ensuring the right tools are available, and scaling solutions responsibly, so we’re solving problems while not creating new ones.”

Prospering in Microsoft Digital

In addition to the central role they play as Customer Zero and the opportunity to engage closely with agentic AI, Microsoft Digital employees also benefit from a wide range of opportunities that go beyond technical skills. Rather than limiting our roles within narrow job definitions, we focus on a more holistic career experience that supports pursuing growth opportunities across Microsoft.

“We invest in growth, exposure, innovation, and collaboration in a way that makes the work both challenging and fulfilling,” Osten says.

Employees at Microsoft Digital use traits like curiosity, empathy, and adaptability to thrive within a fast-moving technical landscape. Being curious leads to learning, learning enables adaptation, and empathy pulls it all together, helping people grow as they collectively manage challenges.

“Technology is evolving so fast that keeping up with everything is a challenge in itself,” Hasan says. “Empathy, for yourself and others, matters when everyone is navigating constant change.”

It’s common for employees to leverage a range of responsibilities both within and between different jobs. Open-mindedness and flexibility are critical. Technology evolves too quickly to get attached to specific ideas or job scopes.

“I began in engineering and operations, moved into network engineering, and then gradually ‘peeled back the onion’ by stepping into technical program management,” Hasan says. “That allowed me to see the end-to-end picture: business value, technology, end users, adoption, and long-term maintenance.”

To be successful at Microsoft Digital, technical skills are important, but what really matters is the ability to innovate and work through uncertainty.

“I look for people who thrive in ambiguity, who enjoy taking on new challenges rather than waiting for perfect clarity,” Osten says. “Collaboration is equally important. In an environment this dynamic, you may be accountable for an outcome, but your success depends on the work of many other teams.”

How Microsoft values drive our work

No description of what it’s like to work at Microsoft Digital is complete without a discussion of the principles that fuel us, both at the department level and for the company as a whole.

“It often feels like drinking from a firehose, in terms of the volume of information one needs to process. It’s high-intensity, but being able to work at the cutting edge and be a part of major technological transformation that empowers everyone on the planet to achieve more makes it totally worth it.”

Mykhailo Sydorchuk, principal product manager, Microsoft Digital

Here are four core Microsoft Digital value pillars, as Osten describes them:

1. People development and skilling. This includes technical skills—including around emerging technologies like agentic AI—as well as people skills. We focus on stakeholder management, storytelling, and career development skills that support long‑term employee growth.
2. Leadership and manager development. We continually build leadership capability through a growth mindset, reinforcing principles like creating clarity, generating positive energy, and driving success. We invest heavily in helping both current and future leaders build “model‑coach‑care” skills.

3. Connection and collaboration. We intentionally create opportunities for teams to understand one another’s dependencies, whether through global meetings or structured collaboration initiatives. It’s easy to become siloed in a large enterprise, and these connections are critical, especially as AI continues to blur traditional boundaries.
4. Inclusion. This means being inclusive across communities, geographies, languages, cultures, and work environments. We focus on how we meet, how remote participation works, and how to ensure everyone can contribute effectively, regardless of location or role.

Following our pillars, and being benchmark examples of Microsoft’s value model, contributes to the success of Microsoft Digital and enables our employees to thrive  working at one of the world’s most prominent tech companies.

“Microsoft is a fast-paced environment, primarily due to scale and constant innovation,” Sydorchuk says. “It often feels like drinking from a firehose, in terms of the volume of information one needs to process. It’s high-intensity, but being able to work at the cutting edge and be a part of major technological transformation that empowers everyone on the planet to achieve more makes it totally worth it.”