• Develop a portfolio-level view of Payments programs, including scope, objectives, and success metrics • Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure technical feasibility and drive projects end-to-end • Provide leadership with clear visibility into execution status, key decisions, risks, and issues • Lead planning, execution, and delivery of large-scale, cross-functional initiatives aimed at improving engineering productivity • Identify technical dependencies and align stakeholders on mitigation strategies across quarterly and bi-annual planning cycles • Manage resource planning, risk escalation, and mitigation to ensure successful program delivery • Drive clear, consistent communication across teams and leadership to ensure accountability and timeline adherence • Define and align on success criteria with stakeholders; continuously assess and mitigate risks • Partner with engineering teams to develop and maintain high-quality internal documentation • Collaborate with leadership to implement best practices and align on Payments priorities • Track and report on key performance indicators (KPIs), highlighting risks and opportunities • Operate independently across stakeholders, maintaining focus on priorities while ensuring no critical details are missed • Build a high-trust team environment, remove blockers quickly, and enable teams to perform at their best • Continuously identify process improvement opportunities with a focus on simplification and productivity

Title: Program Manager - Europe Location: 5301 Southwest Parkway Suite 200 Austin, TX Remote Job Description: Company Introduction WorldStrides is the global leader in educational travel and experiential learning. The company was founded in 1967 to provide middle school travel programs to Washington, D.C. and has grown to provide a wide range of programs for more than half a million students annually to over 100 countries around the world. WorldStrides offers experiential learning programs in educational travel, performing arts, language immersion, career exploration, service-learning, study abroad, and sports. Each of these experiences helps students to see beyond the classroom and to see the world – and themselves – in new ways. Job Description: The Program Manager is responsible for advising, converting, and supporting students participating in WorldStrides Higher Education programs throughout a specific region. Program Managers guide students from application through departure, ensuring a smooth, informed, and supportive journey to studying abroad. The role includes ongoing communication with students, families, and U.S. university partners. Our team believes deeply in the power of international education and brings that enthusiasm to every student interaction. Responsibilities - Student Advising & Case Management - Provide high‑quality advising from application through program departure using established best practices. - Maintain proactive communication via phone, email, and virtual meetings. - Review and determine eligibility of student applications for designated program locations. - Advise students on academics, course registration, host university expectations, housing, visas, budgeting, cultural preparation, and program logistics. Program Operations - Review course selection forms, academic documentation, and placement exams; manage accurate and highly-detailed course information. - Manage and update pre-departure orientations for assigned locations. - Prepare Arrival Guides and all pre‑departure materials for each student cohort. - Support visa advising for destinations, in coordination with internal teams. - Track acceptance timelines, enrollment metrics, and withdrawals; use these insights to inform best practices. Stakeholder Communication - Communicate professionally with families and U.S. university partners regarding program details, expectations, and processes. - Respond to on‑site incident reports in collaboration with regional teams and other internal stakeholders. - Participate in the program-wide on‑call rotation approximately once per year. Program Improvement & Team Collaboration - Review program evaluations and work with the Team Lead on improvements. - Support emerging projects, new program locations, and evolving responsibilities driven by enrollment trends. - Optional domestic travel to support recruitment efforts and pre‑departure orientations at U.S. universities. Qualifications - Bachelor’s degree. - 1–3 years of professional experience preferred. - Strong interest in international education and student development. - Excellent written and oral communication skills, including strong phone presence. - Demonstrated critical thinking and ability to work calmly under pressure. - Detail‑oriented with strong time‑management and organizational skills. - Ability to work both independently and collaboratively. - Willingness to take on responsibilities beyond core tasks as needed. - Ability to lift up to 30 lbs (e.g., recruitment materials). - Valid passport in the even international program support is needed. - Friendly, positive, service-oriented approach to student support. - Experience living, studying, or working abroad - Previous experience in student advising, customer service, or administrative roles. - Strong intercultural communication skills in a professional context. Work Perks - Fun & driven environment. - Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage, life, accidental death and dismemberment, accident, critical illness, and disability insurance, FSA healthcare, FSA dependent care, HSA with employer contribution, and generous 401k match. - 10 paid floating corporate holidays, 1 paid volunteer day & up to 25 accrued PTO days to start – accrue up to 28 over 3 years, up to 4 mental health days per year, and 5 bereavement days. - Tuition reimbursement up to five thousand, two hundred fifty dollars annually or one thousand dollars towards professional certification annually. - Opportunities for paid and discounted travel. - Flexible work schedule providing on-site, remote, and virtual office opportunities. - Encouraged participation in our Employee Resource Groups and Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion council. - Fitness Center and café onsite at select locations. - Employee Assistance Program (EAP) - Paid Parental, Caregiver, and Disability leave. - Team Member Discount Program WorldStrides, a global organization, is committed to educate and serve communities worldwide. Our commitment is fueled by the passion of our team members and partners to make experiential learning accessible, while also being socially, environmentally, and ethically responsible. Together, we accomplish this by investing in initiatives to promote inclusion, diversity, and sustainability. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, WorldStrides is committed to building a diverse workforce, supported by an environment that promotes inclusion and belonging. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. WorldStrides will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the United States. This is not a position for which sponsorship will be provided. Individuals with temporary visas such as E, F-1, J-1, H-1, H-2, L, B, J or TN, or who need sponsorship for work authorization now or in the future, are not eligible for hire. Select seasonal roles may consider students on J-1 or F-1 visas.

• Customer Impact Analysis: Partners with Engineering early in the development lifecycle to determine the specific customer impact of maintenance, security patches, and upgrades across SaaS and PaaS offerings. • Strategic Maintenance Scheduling: Negotiates and orchestrates release windows with Operations and R&D to avoid customer peak times and ensure that "scheduled actions" are conducted with minimal disruption. • Architectural Translation: Translates technical engineering notes into "impact profiles" that Account Managers and CSMs can use to advise their specific customers on required actions. • Change Kit Execution: Builds and deploys "Change Kits" for customers, including email sequences, internal announcement templates for customer admins, FAQs, and step-by-step migration guides. • Release Readiness Liaison: Facilitates "Go/No-Go" readiness reviews from the Customer Success perspective, ensuring that all customer-facing documentation, FAQs, and internal support teams are ready for the change. • Technical Risk Assessment: Identifies interdependencies between product releases and cloud hosting updates to anticipate and mitigate potential "alignment debt" before it reaches the customer. • Operational Reporting: Maintains real-time dashboards for account teams to monitor which of their customers have completed mandatory technical actions and where blockers remain. • Prompt Engineering & Management: Helps to develop and maintain a team-wide library of AI prompts and tools to ensure consistency in tone, style, and formatting across a diverse global customer base.

Overview With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. We drive cross-company alignment and execution, ensuring that we consistently exceed customers’ expectations in every interaction, whether in-product, digital, or human-centered. CE&S is responsible for all up services across the company, including consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft’s portfolio of solutions and products. Join CE&S and help us accelerate AI transformation for our customers and the world. The Customer Success & Delivery (CSD) team creates compelling digital experiences across the Services business by leveraging the full breadth of Microsoft technology and solutions to realize business outcomes and results, across CE&S (Customer Experience & Success). As a Technical Program Manager on the CSD team, you will drive the delivery of innovative digital customer engagement experiences where you will focus on “AI Driven Approvals” through system and tooling innovation. Hundreds of approvals are granted each week across the business before a deal can be closed – each one takes human review and delays deal completion. The advances in AI gives us an opportunity to re-imagine the types of approvals, the process we follow and implement technology to automate and assist approval workflows leveraging AI. You will orchestrate cross-functional initiatives to determine a new approach to approvals and partner with engineering to implement new functionality. 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 the re‑imagination of deal approvals through AI‑first design—shifting from manual, exception‑driven workflows to policy‑led, automated, and agent‑assisted approval experiences. • Own prioritization and delivery of approval modernization initiatives, ensuring simplified, scalable approval paths that accelerate deal velocity while maintaining governance and compliance. • Drive complex cross‑functional execution across sales, finance, deal desk, engineering, and operations to align approval policies, tooling, and field experience end‑to‑end. • Define and track success metrics (OKRs, KPIs) tied to approval cycle time, exception reduction, seller productivity, and first‑pass deal accuracy. • Partner closely with engineering to translate approval strategy into actionable product roadmaps that deliver measurable business outcomes. • Author clear user stories, technical requirements, and acceptance criteria focused on approval automation, decision intelligence, and guardrail enforcement. • Use Azure DevOps (ADO) as the system of record to manage approval backlogs, dependencies, releases, and transparent, data‑driven delivery. • Design and execute Business Value Testing (BVT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to validate approval flows, edge cases, and policy adherence before scale. • Lead staging, pilots, and phased rollouts of new approval experiences, ensuring readiness, adoption, and controlled risk introduction. • Ensure operational supportability through clear documentation, diagnostics, and guidance for approval scenarios and exception handling. • Serve as a trusted advisor and evangelist for modern approval models, educating stakeholders on AI‑assisted decisioning and governance by design. • Continuously refine approval processes and use cases, raising the bar on speed, quality, and consistency across the deal lifecycle. Qualifications Required/minimum qualifications - Bachelor's Degree AND 4+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience. - 2+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects. Additional or preferred qualifications - Bachelor's Degree AND 8+ years experience engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience. - 6+ years of experience managing cross-functional and/or cross-team projects. - 1+ year(s) of experience reading and/or writing code (e.g., sample documentation, product demos). - 2+ years experience with Customer Success processes including approval workflows, offering design and enablement. - Demonstrated experience with: - Translate policies, governance requirements, and business frameworks into clear, testable approval automation requirements and guardrails. - Define user stories, acceptance criteria, and measurable outcomes (cycle time, approvals removed, exception reduction). - Apply robust technical literacy to workflow design, including dependencies across tools/services, data flows, and handoffs. - Lead enterprise-scale transformation from manual, approval-heavy processes to policy-driven, automated/AI-assisted approval experiences embedded in deal flow. - Own backlog shaping, prioritization, release planning, and dependency/risk management in ADO. - Designed and executed BVT/UAT, ideally for AI focused feature released. - Document defects, gaps, and change requests with precision to drive rapid iteration and reduce approval regressions. - Map current-state vs future-state approval journeys and identify high-impact simplification opportunities. - Represent business needs in engineering forums and translate engineering constraints into practical policy + platform solutions. - Influence cross-functional stakeholders (policy, compliance, sales, engineering, operations) to land changes with clarity, readiness, and adoption. Technical Program Management IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $158,400 - $258,000 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.