Sr Director Industry Advisory

Are you passionate about telecommunications industry transformation for the Frontier AI era? Japan's telecommunications sector is undergoing a fundamental shift in how operators grow, operate, monetize their networks, meet regulatory expectations, and serve customers. Japanese carriers are moving from experimentation to enterprise scale transformation, reengineering the core business processes that run the industry, automating the network toward autonomous operations, and rethinking how they create value beyond connectivity. Microsoft's Frontier Industry Advisory team is at the heart of that innovation, working directly with telecom business leaders to rewrite the playbook while staying grounded in the mission and business objectives of the industry.   This role is fundamentally about leading Japan's telecom customers and partners into the AI era. Connectivity alone is commoditizing. The operators that thrive over the next decade will be those that transform how work actually gets done, end to end across the operational and business process landscape, and that make AI a structural capability rather than a collection of pilots. You will be the person who helps them see that path, believe it, and execute it.   The value you create is measured in the business: cycle time reduction in order to activate, cost to serve reduction in trouble to resolve, revenue leakage recovery in usage to cash, faster concept to market for new products, and measurable headcount redeployment in a labor constrained market.   Japan presents a distinctive market: a mature, highly competitive mobile and broadband market with intense price pressure, an aging and shrinking population driving both labor shortage automation and overseas growth strategies, world leading network quality expectations, ambitious next generation network initiatives, and carriers operating as diversified conglomerates spanning finance, commerce, media, and enterprise IT. Operators work within the policy and supervisory framework of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), alongside expectations on data protection under APPI, network resilience, and consumer protection.   As a Frontier Industry Advisor on the Frontier Industry Advisory team, based in Japan, you will help Microsoft's most strategic telecom customers define and execute AI led transformation agendas. You will originate industry led business opportunities and executive conversations that connect business outcomes to Microsoft cloud, data, AI, security, and partner capabilities, and you will shape and close the large, complex, multi year deals that carry those agendas. The primary focus of the role is telecommunications, with a secondary component covering media and entertainment, including broadcasters, streaming platforms, content and advertising businesses, reflecting the reality that many Japanese carriers operate significant media assets within their groups.   Microsoft is deeply engaged with the industry's leading standards and trade bodies, TM Forum and the GSMA, and this role is expected to be an active participant in that ecosystem. You will bring TM Forum frameworks (eTOM, ODA, Open APIs, Autonomous Networks maturity levels) and GSMA initiatives (Open Gateway and network APIs, industry AI and sustainability programmes, operator working groups) into customer conversations, and represent Microsoft's industry point of view back into those communities.

Business Process Transformation   Leads business process transformation conversations grounded in TM Forum reference frameworks (eTOM, SID, Open Digital Architecture, and Open APIs), using them as a shared language with customers to map the current operating model, identify where value leaks, and design the target state. Aligns transformation designs to the ODA component model and to GSMA Open Gateway network API standards where service exposure and monetization are in scope, so that redesigned processes and