Assistant General Counsel, Cela Lead for Asia

Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us achieve our mission.

Microsoft Corporate, External and Legal Affairs (CELA) has an opening for a motivated, skilled and talented legal or government affairs professional to: (1) lead, manage and inspire the eight professionals who make up the CELA Asia Pacific (APAC) Customer & Partner Solutions (CPS) team, (2) provide market leading legal advice, support and counsel to the Area Vice President and wider Microsoft Customer & Partner Solutions (MCAPS) team in APAC and partner with them to create and execute the overall strategy for the area (3) partner with the MCAPS business to achieve the company’s ambitious revenue, deployment and growth objectives; and (4) support the company’s public policy objectives in a wide range of areas through a well-defined and effectively executed government relations strategy for countries in the region. APAC consists of ## countries with team members located in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Regular travel will be part of the role.

The role reports to the Regional Vice President for CELA Asia, and the CELA APAC Lead will be a member of the CELA Asia LT with Area leads for Australia/New Zealand, Greater China, India, Japan, and Korea.

**Responsibilities**:

- ** MCAPS Transactional and Digital Transformation Support**: The CELA APAC lead will be responsible for managing and coordinating the legal services required to negotiate and close customer, partner and vendor contracts to deliver revenue, deployment, usage and growth of Microsoft’s products and services. The successful individual must be able to blend legal guidance and business-focused insights to conceive and implement creative solutions to legal and regulatory deal-related issues, with a focus on supporting the digital transformation of Microsoft’s existing and new customers.
- **Cloud Adoption and Public Policy Engagement**:The CELA APAC Lead will be focused, in particular, on accelerating our customers’ move to the cloud and will devote time externally focused on positioning Microsoft as the most trusted, responsible and inclusive cloud services provider. In that connection, the larger CELA APAC team is responsible for promoting an enabling public policy environment across the APAC countries with a focus on new and emerging regulations relating to digital services, digital markets, data, and artificial intelligence.
- **Microsoft Runs on Trust**:The CELA APAC Lead will serve as the CELA representative on the APAC MCAPS Compliance Committee and will play a key role in ensuring the MCAPS business runs on trust, complies with the law, and adheres to company policies.
- ** Team Leadership and People Management**: The CELA APAC Lead will lead, manage, coach, and develop the talented APAC CELA team of legal and government affairs professionals and inspire them to achieve high impact, top performance and individual growth.
- ** Trusted Advisor**: The CELA APAC Lead will serve as a trusted advisor and counselor to the APAC Area Vice President and her leadership team and will serve as a member of the APAC MCAPS business leadership team.
- ** CELA CPS Leadership Team**:The CELA APAC lead will be an important part of the global CELA CPS Leadership team and will be expected to make positive and active contributions to this diverse and dynamic team, including contributing to the setting of strategy, tactics and commitments in support of company and CPS long-term, annual and quarterly goals. The team values collaboration and it’s a key value to contribute to each other’s success.
- ** Budget, Vendor and Outside Counsel Coordination**: The CELA APAC Lead will manage the CELA CEE budget and drive synergies in management and retention of outside counsel, strategic advisors and other vendors.

**Qualifications**:
**Experienced People Manager and Team Leader**: Experienced leader, manager, coach and developer of talent with a proven ability to motivate and inspire a team to achieve high impact, top performance and individual growth. An inclusive, authentic and transparent leadership style is important.

**Strong and Proven Communication Skills**: Highly developed written and oral communication skills and ability to communicate legal and government affairs advice promptly and pragmatically in a business context in English is a must. Proven experience as a team lead and external and internal spokesperson. Must be able to proactively advance company positions through high impact engagement in small and/or large group settings, including communications with business leaders. Proven ability to establish trusted advisor relationships with business l