Principal AI Product Manager, Minecraft
Software Engineering, Product, Data Science
Redmond, WA, USA
At Mojang Studios, the creators of Minecraft, we are on a mission to build a better world through the power of play.
Why play? Well, play is at the heart of everything we do. It’s the blocky backbone of our games, the core of our development philosophy, and even the origin of our name. From the relentless experimentation of our endlessly inspiring community to the classrooms where Minecraft has become an essential teaching tool, play is the bedrock of our existence.
We enable millions to create and play together, connect people across the globe, and foster a community that is among the most active and passionate in the world. Our community is global and incredibly diverse. When we are developing anything within our franchise, we keep this in mind. We want everyone to not only feel included in Minecraft, but also to see themselves in what we make. Our goal is for the Mojang Studios team to be as diverse as our community.
The Principal AI Product Manager at Mojang Studios will help drive the studio’s incubation efforts, internal tooling, and adoption of emerging AI technologies. This role partners across product, engineering, research, GitHub, GitHub Copilot, and studio leadership to translate fast-moving AI capabilities into practical, trusted, and high-impact solutions for Minecraft and Mojang.
The ideal candidate combines technical depth, hands-on AI product experience, executive communication, stakeholder leadership, and a passion for educating teams through technology change. This is a key role in helping Mojang move faster, work smarter, and responsibly explore how AI can improve both studio operations and creator-led innovation.
The ideal candidate will have:
- Experience working in a fast and innovative environment.
- A proven technical background, with prior engineering experience preferred.
- Deep understanding of AI tools, models, systems, and current state-of-the-art capabilities.
- Hands-on experience building, launching, or scaling AI-powered products or internal tools.
- A proven track record of stakeholder management across leadership, technical teams, and cross-functional partners.
- Executive level communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts, tradeoffs, risks, and opportunities clearly.
- Experience driving change management for adoption of new technologies, tools, or workflows.
- A track record of education and enablement, teaching new technologies to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience working in innovation, incubation, emerging technology, or ambiguous product spaces.
- Transparent communication, high-trust collaboration, and high-autonomy ownership.
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
- Lead product execution for AI innovation initiatives across Mojang Studios.
- Own executive-level communication for AI projects, incubation work, opportunities, risks, and progress.
- Partner closely with GitHub, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft AI teams, engineering, product, and studio stakeholders to bring relevant AI capabilities into Mojang workflows.
- Drive stakeholder alignment across technical and non-technical teams, ensuring AI initiatives are clearly framed, responsibly scoped, and connected to measurable studio outcomes.
- Help define, prioritize, and deliver internal AI tooling that improves studio efficiency, creativity, and operational effectiveness.
- Support AI education and training programs for both technical and non-technical employees.
- Lead change management efforts that help teams adopt new AI tools, workflows, and practices with confidence.
- Own or coordinate the technical setup, access, and management of AI hardware and incubation environments.
- Stay current on AI industry trends, emerging models, tooling, developer workflows, and enterprise adoption patterns.
- Operate with high autonomy in ambiguous spaces, turning emerging technology opportunities into practical plans, prototypes, and shipped outcomes.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree AND 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
- OR equivalent experience.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree AND 12+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
- OR equivalent experience.
- 6+ years experience improving product, adoption, usage, efficiency, or business metrics for a product, feature, platform or internal tool.
- 6+ years experience disrupting, transforming, or modernizing a product area, workflow, market, or internal operating model through new technology.
- 4+ years experience taking a product, feature, or experience to market, including internal tools, platforms, frameworks, or incubation products.
- 3+ years experience working with AI, ML, developer tooling, platform products, emerging technologies, or technically complex product areas.
- 3+ years experience driving cross-functional stakeholder alignment, executive communication, or change management for new technology adoption.
- Proven technical fluency in AI tools, models, systems, AI-assisted development workflows, and current industry trends.
- Ability to translate complex technical AI concepts into business value for executives, engineering teams, and non-technical stakeholders.
- Experience partnering with engineering, data science, research, product, and external partner teams to define, prototype, launch, and scale AI-powered solutions.
- Stakeholder management skills across leadership, technical teams, and cross-functional partners.
- Demonstrated ability to educate and enable both technical and non-technical audiences on new technologies.
- Experience operating in ambiguous, fast-moving, innovation-oriented environments.
- Experience in a prior technical role, such as software engineering, data science, applied AI, technical program management, or technical product management.
- Hands-on experience building, launching, or scaling AI-powered products, internal tools, prototypes, or incubation efforts.
- Experience with GitHub Copilot, AI-assisted development, agentic workflows, model evaluation, developer productivity, or internal AI platforms.
- Experience managing technical incubation environments, AI hardware, compute access, model access, or experimentation infrastructure.
- Executive storytelling, written communication, and product strategy skills.
- High-trust, high-autonomy ownership style with transparent communication and bias for action.
In the end, it’s the people of Mojang Studios that make this place truly special. When you join, you’ll find yourself in the company of incredibly bright, warm, and creative individuals – all united and working toward a single goal. Come help us reach it!
#mojangjobs #gamingjobs
Product Management IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 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.