Senior Brand Architecture & Naming Strategist
IT
Redmond, WA, USA
USD 106,400-203,600 / year
At Microsoft we’re shaping a Frontier Marketing organization that learns faster, activates smarter, and drives measurable impact. Our approach blends human creativity with AI-powered insights to fuel bold, brand building at scale. We prioritize outcomes over outputs, embrace rapid learning loops, and operate in agile flight formations that unite disciplines.
Microsoft's commercial portfolio is one of our most valuable assets — and how we name, structure, and connect it directly shapes how customers understand our innovation. This role will own the maintenance and evolution of the Microsoft commercial brand architecture and naming system. You will work across business areas to develop systems-level guidance for emerging technologies — agents, models, and the categories that don't exist yet — so that Microsoft's innovation reads as clear, coherent, and trustworthy.
In the Senior Brand Architecture & Naming Strategist role you will drive the Commercial Naming Program, which reviews every external-facing name used in marketing and technical materials as well as in-product User Experience (UX) — products and services, agents, models, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Software Development Kits (SDKs), features, add-ons, marketing handles, and programs and initiatives. You will partner closely with teams across brand, legal, product, product design, and marketing leaders through executive approval (Corporate Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer).
Key outcomes owned: drive mindshare for Microsoft by proactively managing and evolving our portfolio of brands, ensuring that brand value accrues across our ecosystem and that our innovation is clear and memorable for our customers. Success is measured by brand attribution, customer comprehension and navigation or our portfolio, and the efficiency of the naming engine.
At Microsoft, our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more guides how we partner with customers to deliver trusted, impactful solutions. With a growth‑mindset culture, we innovate responsibly and measure success by shared progress, people, teams, and customers. Join us to do meaningful work that changes the world and helps shape what’s next for everyone.
Responsibilities
Brand architecture and portfolio strategy
• Own the Microsoft commercial brand architecture end to end — define and evolve the frameworks, naming conventions, and hierarchy rules that govern how our products and services relate to one another.
• Develop systems-level naming guidance for emerging technology categories so that innovation lands in a coherent structure rather than as one-off decisions.
• Proactively manage the portfolio of brands so brand value accrues to Microsoft and its hero brands, recommending consolidation, retirement, or elevation of names where the portfolio has drifted.
• Partner with product marketing to ensure portfolio fit is resolved before naming begins — considering product definition, audience, value proposition, portfolio fit, and business model.
Naming program leadership
• Lead the Commercial Naming Program, including intake, review, ideation, and approval for every external-facing name used in marketing, technical materials, and product UX.
• Facilitate naming ideation grounded in the Microsoft’s naming strategy and principles.
• Ensure approved names flow to Term Studio and the Style Guide, and that guidance and definitions stay current as the portfolio evolves.
Process, tooling, and operations
• Improve the efficiency of the naming engine — reduce cycle time, remove rework, and increase the share of requests that arrive naming-ready at the recommended eight weeks before announcement.
• Own the tooling roadmap for naming intake, tracking, taxonomy, and reporting, including the application of AI to accelerate ideation, screening, and portfolio analysis.
• Define and publish self-serve naming guidance and other educational materials so partner teams can resolve standard nomenclature and naming questions without active support.
Leadership and influence
• Represent brand architecture and naming decisions to CVP- and CMO-level stakeholders with clear rationale, evidence, and trade-offs.
• Build durable partnerships with product marketing, Corporate, External, & Legal Affairs (CELA)/trademark, product, and product design teams.
• Define and report the measurement framework for the program: brand attribution, customer comprehension and navigation or our portfolio, and the efficiency of the naming engine.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- 6+ years work experience at a branding agency or with product marketing, brand building, and/or strategy development OR equivalent experience.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Business, Linguistics, or a related field
- 3+ years of experience owning brand architecture, naming, and/or portfolio strategy for a multi-product technology or enterprise portfolio.
- 3+ years of people management, team leadership, or project leadership experience, including leading vendors and/or extended teams.
- Demonstrated experience influencing and securing decisions from senior executive stakeholders.
- Experience naming enterprise cloud, AI, data, or security offerings, and building nomenclature systems for fast-moving technology categories.
- Working knowledge of trademark and legal clearance processes and close partnership with legal/CELA teams.
- Experience designing or scaling program operations and tooling — intake, workflow, taxonomy management, and reporting — including applying AI to creative and operational workflows.
- Experience working across a matrixed global organization.
- Exceptional writing and verbal storytelling skills, with the judgment to simplify complex portfolios and technologies into customer-facing language.
Brand IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $106,400 - $203,600 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 $137,600 - $222,600 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.