Overview

The Microsoft Sales Enablement & Operations (SE&O) team plays an essential role in translating Microsoft’s Commercial Strategy to a local execution plan and driving operational excellence to achieve the greatest results possible. Our team drives cross-Region, cross-Area and cross-Subsidiary insight and execution excellence, bringing strategy and priorities to life by accelerating the pace of transformation and enabling Microsoft to deliver business impact at scale.

As the Activation GTM Manager for Cloud & AI in JAPAN, you will accelerate revenue growth, boost field agility, and deliver results with our field sellers by deepening your partnership with key stakeholders across JAPAN, including Sales Excellence, Sales, Marketing, Consulting, Customer Success, and Partner functions, supporting One Microsoft. You will focus on driving alignment across processes and tools, leading with a cross-solution approach to optimize pipelines, ensuring effective communication and flawless execution, and leveraging insights to drive data-driven decision-making. This role is critical to driving customer adoption at scale, driven by deep solution play domain, product truth, and partnerships with sales, marketing, operations, and sales excellence.

We’re looking for a highly driven, motivated marketing or sales individual to join our Go-to-Market (GTM) team. This role requires someone who acts as a thought leader, tracks success criteria and performance metrics, works with emergent technology, creates alignment and action across teams, removes roadblocks, and simplifies complex concepts. This individual truly lives for big challenges. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth, develop deep business acumen, and hone your leadership skills.

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 Growth Strategy & Business Performance:

In partnership with the JAPAN Activation GTM team and the Activation GTM Director, you will execute Cloud & AI Platforms (CAIP) solution plays to enhance ACR performance in partnership with Solution Play GTM teams. Responsible for new pipeline creation, addressing pipeline gaps by Operating Units/sales segment, and implementing global strategies relevantly for your Area/Subsidiaries, including FY26 CAIP program performance.

Sales Activation:

In partnership with the JAPAN Activation GTM team and the Activation GTM Director, lead end-to-end solution play field activation to win customers across the CAIP solution plays including cross-Commercial Solution Areas plays such as Agentic. Resolve blockers and influence strategic improvements through field feedback loops. Partner closely with the Solution Play GTM teams to deliver field readiness and skilling as well as capture and share insights on customer wins/losses, compete trends, and partner feedback.

Demand Generation:

In partnership with the JAPAN Activation GTM team and the Activation GTM Director, align and orchestrate the execution of CAIP marketing plan with Integrated Marketing Managers (IMM), Solution Play GTM teams and Partner roles. Push for signal conversion to create pipe and ensure successful customer targeting events. Provide content input and shape agendas to amplify CAIP priorities.

Product Leadership:

Act as a strong Azure and CAIP solutions advocate by demonstrating thought leadership externally with customers and partners, and internally with Corp. Champion local needs and insights to shape global product strategy, roadmap, and readiness through structured feedback loops. Understand industry trends, challenges, and regulatory requirements.

Consumption Commitment + Unified Stewardship:

Steward Consumption Commitment by advancing acquisition strategy, expanding the scope of workloads in the customer contracts, accelerating Azure consumption revenue via Unified Support offering, expanding Unified accounts and driving data-driven optimization. Partner strongly with the JAPAN Activation GTM Director to drive improvement in Consumption Commitment penetration significantly.

Operational Excellence:

Partner closely with Regional and Area Sales Excellence and Sales Operations to drive sales discipline, pipeline creation and acceleration, and the standard customer engagement model orchestration. Promote consistent use of programs and investments as well as standardized services and tools in the field sales teams. Partner with Area Activation Director to drive a connected Rhythm-of-Business that tracks end-to-end business health, aligning sales and marketing insights with Microsoft headquarters through key cadences.

You will exemplify Microsoft Values, Culture, Leadership Principles and create clarity by creating a shared understanding.

Qualifications Required (RQs)

• 5+ years marketing strategy, business planning, sales enablement, business development, technical pre-sales or related work experience, OR equivalent experience
• Language proficiency - native in Japanese and professional in English

Preferred Qualifications (PQs)

• 8+ years experience managing and expanding a product/solution portfolio and driving demand generation and pipeline acceleration within a complex (e.g., multinational or matrixed) organization
• Experienced in Enterprise markets and businesses
• Experienced in leveraging AI to support customer success and transformation
• Familiar with Azure and/or AWS/GCP, understand the executions of commercial cloud & AI business
• Experienced in introducing new product and services to JAPAN market
• OR equivalent experience

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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.