Principal Product Manager, Minecraft
Product
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.
Minecraft is one of the world's most enduring entertainment franchises, spanning game experiences, creator ecosystems, live services, consumer products, transmedia, and community moments that reach players around the globe. The Minecraft team is looking for a Principal Product Manager to shape product strategy, roadmap clarity, and cross-studio execution for franchise-wide initiatives that require tight alignment across Minecraft Online, game teams, publishing, franchise, and partner organizations.
In this role, you will translate ambiguous, multi-team opportunities into clear product strategy, customer outcomes, investment priorities, roadmap plans, success metrics, and launch-ready decisions.
You will partner across Microsoft Gaming Experiences (MGE), Franchise, Product, Engineering, Design, Marketing, Business Development, Licensing, Legal, Operations, Analytics, and studio leadership to ensure high-priority initiatives are customer-centered, strategically sequenced, measurable, and delivered with clarity. The ideal candidate is an experienced product leader who brings structured thinking to complex work, anticipates trade-offs, drives decision-making, and helps teams align from early strategy through execution, launch readiness, and post-launch learning.
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
1. Product Operating Model & Portfolio Clarity
- Maintain product operating rhythms, portfolio views, decision forums, roadmap artifacts, status updates, and escalation paths across Minecraft Online (MCO) that help distributed teams make crisp decisions and execute predictably.
- Drive alignment across multiple initiatives at different stages of maturity, from early opportunity framing and intake through prioritization, greenlight, delivery, go-to-market, launch, and retrospectives.
- Ensure cross-functional partners have the customer context, product rationale, timing, trade-offs, and decisions needed to deliver franchise moments and studio commitments with quality.
2. Franchise & MCO/MGE Product Coordination
- Partner with Franchise, Marketing, Consumer Products, Licensing, Business Development, Legal, and studio teams to identify product dependencies, sequence work, clarify customer and business impact, and support integrated execution plans.
3. Prioritization, Risk & Decision Management
- Proactively identify customer, business, schedule, resourcing, technical, partner, legal, compliance, and operational risks; drive mitigations and clear product recommendations.
- Maintain dependency maps across teams and workstreams, ensuring critical path items and product decisions are visible, tracked, and resolved before they impact quality, delivery, or customer outcomes.
- Facilitate crisp decision-making by framing options, trade-offs, owners, deadlines, customer impact, business impact, and execution implications for leaders and cross-functional stakeholders.
4. Product Communication & Team Effectiveness
- Create executive-ready communications that synthesize complex product work into clear strategy, progress updates, risks, decisions, metrics, and next steps.
- Support a culture of accountability, transparency, inclusion, customer focus, and high-quality execution across geographically distributed and cross-discipline teams.
- Continuously improve product planning and operating practices by applying data, retrospectives, operational metrics, stakeholder feedback, and lessons learned across the portfolio.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience in product/service/program management or software development
- OR equivalent experience.
- 1+ year(s) people management experience.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in games, live services, entertainment franchises, consumer products, publishing, creator ecosystems, marketplaces, or digital experiences.
- 10+ years in product management, program management, product operations, or related roles.
- 5+ years leading complex, cross-functional product initiatives across multiple teams, disciplines, or organizations.
- Experience driving product strategy, roadmap planning, prioritization, dependency management, stakeholder alignment, metrics, and execution for large-scale products, services, games, or entertainment initiatives.
- Experience coordinating product work across product, engineering, design, marketing, business development, legal, licensing, analytics, operations, and executive stakeholders.
- Proven product leadership skills, including customer insight, roadmap strategy, success metrics, launch readiness, portfolio tracking, decision framing, executive communication, and operational rigor.
- Ability to bring clarity to ambiguity, influence without authority, and drive accountability across distributed teams and stakeholders.
- Passion for games and deep empathy for Minecraft players, creators, partners, communities, and the teams that serve them.
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!
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Product Management M5 - 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.