Business Program Manager Apprentice

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. As employees they come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realise their shared goals. Each day they build on their values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Part of a global team, the unique purpose of our Consumer Sales organization team in the UK and Ireland is to work with ecosystem partners to build, market and sell a winning portfolio that delights customers and earns fans around the world. Powered by Microsoft Windows and Surface devices, Office and Xbox, we also seek to enable customers and partners achieve more digitally with new innovative IoT solutions and market opportunities including voice, mixed reality and artificial intelligence.

BSO, the business & Sales Operation team is the team that takes care from everything back office related. Our mission is to reduce frictions & enable growth for the other teams within CSO. We support our teams by providing programs, reporting and insight and, more critically, by looking left-to-right across the business and identifying areas where a different approach could drive a step change for business growth, our partnerships or how our teams get work done.

We work across all consumer and device teams in the UK & Ireland region, collaborating closely with the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Our function is central and our remit touches Category Management, Channel and Device Sales, Channel & Device Marketing, Finance and Operations Management.

Responsibilities

As an apprentice of the EMEA BSO team, you will be in charge of supporting the EMEA BSO members to achieve their missions.

To start, you will shadow our BSO Lead in the UK to gain an understanding of the structure of our business, the different functions and priorities within the teams, how they intersect and how our role fits in. You will learn how to project manage; including idea inception, stakeholder engagement and discussion, engagement with technical resource, planning for change management, training, milestone setting and roll out.

You will take ownership of the business intelligence reporting suite structure and the communications plan for the business on new reporting and tools. You will learn valuable business communication and influence skills and engage with our outsourced agency, giving you another perspective on business structure.

You will take ownership of the seasonal planning cycle, ensuring quality category and account plans are produced on time and facilitating leadership reviews. Through this, you will have exposure to a structured planning rhythm, learn what a strong category plan and account plan look like and experience the delivery of these plans to the Leadership Team.

You will learn about the fundamentals of business and how to manage a plan across many individuals.

You will become an expert in key areas of business process and culture and learn about communications within large organisations and how to achieve cut-through with your message. This will lead to you taking responsibility for training program design and creative content creation for ongoing team training on business processes and tools.

Qualifications

We are looking for a self-starter who is passionate about all aspects of business. You must be highly organised with an eye for detail and an interest in business culture and enabling data-driven decisions.

We need someone with the potential to understand complex programs or data sets along with the presenation skills and style to articulate the business value in a clear, concise and compelling way.

This role will offer an opportunity to take in all aspects of the business, learn from a wide range of people in a wide range of roles and propose new ways of working to drive tangible change.

To be eligible for this apprenticeship, you must not have a degree. However, you should have:

• Obtained suitable level 3 qualifications by 31st August 2025 (3 A-levels with grades A*-C, BTEC Nationals, T Levels, or equivalent). A-levels should include Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry, or Computer Science.
• Obtained 5 GCSEs, including Maths and English, with grades A*-C or 9-4 on the new grading system.

You need to be legally authorised (have citizenship or a valid visa/work permit) to work in the UK to be eligible for this role.

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.