Crisis Manager - EMEA

Job Description

Overview

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 and we need you as a Crisis Manager.

As a regional Crisis Manager within Cloud Operations & Innovation (CO+I) you will enable Microsoft datacenters to adeptly plan for, respond to, manage, and mitigate critical incidents across Europe and Middle East. You will join a global Continuity & Resilience team focused on ensuring operational resilience within the "Four Walls" of our datacenters. You will lead and coordinate complex, high‑stakes responses—from horizon scanning through activation—bringing clarity, structure, and momentum when conditions are fast‑moving and ambiguous. You will anticipate emerging threats, drive regional impact assessments, and facilitate CO+I Crisis Management Team (CMT) briefings, aligning stakeholders to decisive actions and measurable outcomes. You should excel in preparing teams across large enterprises and evaluating the effectiveness of our crisis response through practical drills and real-time incident management. Strategic foresight, coupled with a proven track record of achieving set objectives, is crucial. Engaging and guiding senior executives will be a routine aspect of this role. The Crisis Manager must be located in the applicable region and will work from an agreed upon datacenter or corporate location.

Microsoft’s Cloud Operations & Innovation (CO+I) is the engine that powers our cloud services. As a Crisis Manager – EMEA you will perform a key role in delivering the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's online services including Bing, Office 365, Xbox, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform. As a group, CO+I is focused on the personal and professional development for all employees and offers trainings and growth opportunities including Career Rotation Programs, Diversity & Inclusion trainings and events, and professional certifications.

Our infrastructure is comprised of a large global portfolio of more than 200 datacenters in 32 countries and millions of servers. Our foundation is built upon and managed by a team of subject matter experts working to support services for more than 1 billion customers and 20 million businesses in over 90 countries worldwide.

With environmental sustainability and optimization at the forefront of our datacenter design and operations, we continue to grow and evolve as we meet the ever-changing business demands that hold Microsoft as a world-class cloud provider.

Do you want to empower billions across the world? Come and join us in CO+I and be at the forefront of the action!

Responsibilities

Performance

• Acts as a crisis manager in response to incidents that disrupt Microsoft business processes and services. Executes resilience plan activation and coordination of response activities across various stakeholder groups, ensuring lessons learned are integrated into plan improvements.
• Oversees and coordinate rapid and effective responses to crisis situations across the region, ensuring minimal disruptions to the business.
• Works as part of the team on designing and implementing comprehensive crisis management strategies and protocols tailored to organizational needs.
• Serves as the primary point of contact during crises, ensuring clear and effective communication with stakeholders, including CO+I employees, leadership, and other organizational partners.
• Regularly evaluates organizational vulnerabilities and potential threats to proactively address and mitigate risks.
• Partners closely with various stakeholders to ensure a cohesive approach to crisis management.
• Leads post-incident reviews to assess response efficacy, identifying areas for improvement and lessons learned.
• Gathers feedback from stakeholders post-crisis and adapt strategies and protocols accordingly.
  
  

Preparedness

• Partners with a variety of Microsoft organizational units to create crisis response plans for decision making and communications, continuity of critical processes, personnel, and technology, supplier resilience, and customer and workload prioritization. Develops plan templates and blueprints used by Microsoft organizational units to develop customized plans.
• Coordinates a variety of complex compliance management projects and maintenance to ensure various Microsoft organizational units meet periodic compliance with Microsoft's Enterprise Resilience (ER) baseline policy and additional certification requirements required by the organization over and above the baseline.

Prevention

• Identifies opportunities for improvement or mitigation of a variety of complex business interruptions and other risks to people, locations, and technology. Partners with various Microsoft organizational units to close a variety of complex risk gaps that could have a significant impact on business operations.
• Develops exercises and exercise frameworks that assess the performance of stakeholder groups in response to a variety of complex, disruptive scenarios. Coordinates and executes crisis management exercises. Incorporates feedback to drive improvements into planning and operations.
• Acts as an informational resource for Microsoft employees, customers, partners, suppliers and other third parties by sharing intermediate and advanced knowledge of resilience best practices and industry trends. Develops and facilitates employee training aimed to promote enterprise resilience.

Qualifications

• Strong experience as a crisis responder within a corporate environment

• Significant experience in reliability, resilience, crisis/incident management, business continuity, risk management, engineering, or compliance work OR equivalent experience.

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.