Director of Communications in Redmond, Washington

At Microsoft Gaming, we aspire to empower the world’s three billion gamers to play the games they want, with the people they want, anywhere they want. Gaming, the largest and fastest growing category in media & entertainment, represents an important growth opportunity for Microsoft. We are leading with innovation, as highlighted by bringing the Game Pass subscription to PC, bringing Xbox to new devices with Cloud Gaming, and our recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, creating exciting new possibilities for players.

The Gaming Players Services & Operations (GPSO) team is seeking a Director of Communications to create, plan, and implement effective communications, ranging from executive to employee engagement, to inform, inspire, and motivate every team member to contribute to the success of our players, our business, and our people. This role will be a part of the Office of the Chief of Staff and will support leaders across the operational arm of Microsoft Gaming.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day, where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

The mission of GPSO is to drive operational excellence and innovation to ensure the joy of gaming for players and partners. As part of the Chief Operating Officer’s Chief of Staff team, the Director of Communications will own all strategic planning and drive communications rhythms, campaigns, and initiatives across the organization, acting as a thought partner to the leadership team and as a liaison between diverse teams and the Chief of Staff’s office.

In this role, you’ll drive special, high visibility projects for leadership teams within GPSO to bring efficiencies and consistency across the organization. In addition to identifying actions with a pragmatic lens and influencing implementation for a broader strategic impact, this role is pivotal to shaping GPSO’s internal stories, ensuring all employees are clear about our mission, are connected to our goals, and feel a sense of belonging to our collective purpose. Ultimately, this position will achieve success by creating and executing a strategy that is integral, applying communications savvy, business acumen, and cultural depth.

Responsibilities

Internal Communications Strategy & Planning

• Communication Strategy Setting & Planning: Drive a comprehensive plan and roadmap. Guided by critical priority areas, build a sustainable infrastructure and ecosystem of informationthat effectively connects strategy, goals, executive messages, culture, diversity, and team wins to anorganization with a wide range of functions. Translates value proposition into effective communications strategies and storytelling that resonate with target audience(s). Understands, segments, and targets audience needs and adapts communications strategies accordingly. Scales messages appropriately for a given effort, including expertise in the levers to use to achieve scale and planning for scale from the outset. 

• Execution of communications strategy: Demonstrate and enhance thought leadership. Create, articulate, and advise on essential/timely communications for the COO and Chief of Staff; Educate, guide, and advise internal stakeholders, customers, and partners on communications strategy and tactics; Mentor others in the execution of tactics to support overall strategy, ensuring consistency of voice across messages and channels, plus best practices

• Internal Comms relationships: Partner with other internal commsleads. Help architect and drive a consistent and repeatable approach to internal communications that maximizes employee engagement and connection throughout Microsoft Gaming; Participate in communications and business planning discussions as appropriate, ensuring complementary and not duplicative or conflicting work product

• Storytelling and messaging: Drive fresh, thoughtful, and diverse storytelling.In leading the organization’s multi-channelcommunications strategy, translate the value proposition and organizational purpose into effective communications strategies and storytelling that resonate with target audience(s) within the organization and across Microsoft Gaming; Understand, segment, and target audience needs, adapting communications strategies; Guides others to determine which story format is most appropriate and meaningful for a story and target audience(s)

• Stakeholder Management: Create a pipeline of perspectives.Build relationships across teams to seedstorytelling opportunities for strategic innovation, mission connection, and cultural belonging; Establish cadence and content map, including applying expertise in the levers used to achieve scale by planning from the outset

• Inclusion : Embed diversity and inclusion throughout strategy and execution, demonstrating thought leadership and evangelism around the mechanisms to achieve perceptual change and normalization of D&I; Normalize the gathering and synthesis of diverse perspectives to engage different skillsets with a growth mindset

• Command communications platforms to inform and facilitate employee communications, including navigating across teams to align priorities, best practices, implementation, security, access, and change management; Includes: SharePoint sites, organization emails, social channels, internal surveys and feedback channels. Evangelize the adoption and use of new technology and tools to help facilitate two-way dialogue between leaders and employees

Executive Communications

• Develop and Maintain Executive Platform/ Voice : Develop, maintain, and serve as the executive voice. Develop and maintainmessaging, tools, and channels to communicate the leader’s strategy within the overall communications infrastructure (existing and developed), providing clarity to stakeholders, developing relationships with key staff and partners, and identifying gaps

• Employee Communications: Coach others and manage the overall strategy for the executive leadership team, aligning all communications to team, business, and organizational objectives, ensuring consistency across messages and channels; May lead a community of comms leads, overseeing centralized messaging and cadence

• Reputation Management: Advise on reputation management. Advance and protect the corporate image with anticipation, understanding, and leveraging factors that impact reputation (e.g., privacy, security, data, experience); Lead effort to determine what is appropriate to withhold, share, continue, or stop based on relevant internal and external factors

• Executive Communications Materials: Manage creative.Oversees the development of all assets contributing to executive narratives, presentations, and production (e.g. videos, speaking engagements) in a coordinated, organizational approach that may include the full leadership team as needed; Partner with external communications, vendors, agencies, and other areas of Microsoft Gaming to advise and lead as needed

• Experience management: Own the experience. Creates ideas for and develops collateral materials (e.g., decks, posts, talking points) for use in a range of communications initiatives and events, connecting content with consistency across channels; Understand how to address diverse audiences and appropriateness of formats, designing from the outset to achieve the desired impact

• Data analysis: Apply data and insights. Monitor, track, and analyze the impact of and responses to messaging for a given issue and create responsive materials as needed; Engageothers appropriately in responsive efforts and leverages insights to inform data-driven actions, approaches, and solutions; Set metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate effectiveness at outset; evaluates and adjusts as needed

Business Management

• ROB Management: Drive GPSO’s rhythm of the business (ROB) including building and managingagendas, coordinating ROB events with the broader organization, and managing events in real time. Engage in cross – team ROB discussions to ensure alignment; Facilitateamong parties to bring consensus on given issues; Gathers and shares feedback to enhance and improve offerings and processes

• ROB Content management : Manage and develop collateral materials. Own all GPSO ROB decks, messaging, talking points, and Teams postsfor use in a range of communications; May include some graphic design and video editing

• ROB Communications: Monitor, track, and analyze impact and resonance of all communications to develop and shape future ROB strategy

• Business Management support: May provide Business Management support (ROB, planning, budgeting) for select teams if temporarily needed.

Culture

• Culture strategy execution: Drive culture initiatives and imagine new opportunities. Manage, advise, and pace GPSO’s culture workstreams to align to strategy and COO’s operating principles.

• Employee Experience management: Help define employee experience at scale for GPSO. Leverage communications as an operating strategy that will propel transformation in culture, connection, and belonging

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications :

• Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Business Administration, Marketing, Communications, Finance, or related field AND 6+ years Communications, Marketing Operations, Field Operations, Program Management, Project Management, or related experience

• OR equivalent experience

• A portfolio of work, demonstrating effective written communication for internal, executive and external audiences, multi-media communication, customer/partner facing presentations, and/or published online stories/blog posts

• Excellent written, verbal professional communication skills and an ability to engage with colleagues ranging from executives to individual contributors

• 6+ years experience driving Rhythm of Business (ROB) for large organizations at scale organizations and managing SharePoint

Additional or Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in relevant field (e.g., Liberal Arts, Business Administration, Management, Computer Science, Engineering) AND 10+ years’ experience in communications, operations, business management, project management, culture and ROB management

• Ability to present concepts and influence across a range of leaders and teams

• Strong, detail-oriented analytical thinking skills, an ability to navigate ambiguity, and creatively solve problems at scale

• Passion for building relationships and culture across the organization

• Ability to deal with ambiguity, significant rolling changes and quick pivots

• Experience working with multidisciplinary teams

• Outstanding organizational skills and deadline management

• Proficiency and a growth mindset in adopting and integrating AI-powered tools

• Demonstrated depth and grasp ofdiversity and inclusion

Communications IC5 – The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $129,200 – $248,800 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 $162,000 – $268,900 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

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until December 25, 2025.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .