Mark Smith

About Mark Smith

I’m a technical product and platform leader with more than 30 years of experience driving AI-powered transformation, enterprise platforms, and cross-functional product strategy. I focus on solving complex customer problems through innovative technology, strong governance, and measurable business outcomes. My work centers on AI product management, cloud transformation, and technical product strategy, aligning innovation with business goals through data-driven decisions, operational excellence, and scalable architecture. With a background spanning.NET, Azure, and AI systems, I combine deep engineering expertise with executive-level product leadership across the full product lifecycle. At Microsoft, I lead the Microsoft Learn Platform PM team, responsible for reinventing our global content ecosystem with AI. Our platform introduces generative authoring, automated validation, and self-healing lifecycle updates that dramatically streamline content creation and publishing. It powers millions of monthly views and enables AI-driven answer services across flagship Microsoft products. I also guide investments in next-generation developer infrastructure, including the MCP Server, which provides real-time structured data access for AI developer experiences, Copilot integrations, and emerging agentic workflows. Earlier in my career, I was a Microsoft MVP in desktop development and founded a successful consulting firm delivering enterprise software solutions in C++ and.NET across industries, including Oil & Gas, Telecommunications, Healthcare, Genomics, and Law Enforcement. These experiences shaped my ability to translate strategic vision into scalable technical systems while building high-performing teams. I also spent nearly a decade as a technical trainer and conference speaker, helping thousands of developers master asynchronous programming, high-performance.NET systems, and mobile application development. In parallel, I contributed to open-source projects and collaborated with Microsoft Research and the University of Texas on genomic sequence analysis using.NET, producing several research papers and advancing techniques for RNA folding analysis.I’m driven by a passion for empowering people, turning ideas into meaningful outcomes, and mentoring the next generation of product and engineering leaders.

Experience

1. Principal Pm Manager

   Microsoft

   Jan 2020 — Present · Redmond, WA, US

   I lead the product portfolio powering Microsoft Learn, overseeing the systems, tools, and services that support Microsoft’s global documentation and learning ecosystem. My team manages the authoring, publishing, and API documentation platforms used daily by thousands of content creators and serving more than 100 million monthly users.My focus is on transforming traditional documentation into an AI-ready content ecosystem, advancing Microsoft’s shift toward AI-driven authoring, validation, and knowledge delivery. This includes integrating AI services that power Ask Learn and Copilot experiences, helping users get accurate, real-time answers grounded in authoritative data. My responsibilities include:• Product Strategy & Platform Leadership: Define strategy and align cross-organizational investments for Learn’s AI, governance, and content systems; partner with engineering, design, and research to deliver secure, scalable solutions.• AI-Powered Transformation: Lead platform modernization through self-healing mechanisms and automated governance that improve quality and detect issues proactively.• Knowledge Management: Partner across content organizations to improve generative AI accuracy and increase customer self-service and support deflection.• Cross-Division Governance: Standardize content and data models across divisions to ensure consistency and readiness for AI integration.• Operational Excellence: Define OKRs and KPIs for reliability, performance, and product quality; present insights and progress to senior leadership.• Team Leadership: Establish agile rhythms to improve planning and delivery; mentor PMs to foster ownership, roadmap accountability, and collaboration with engineering.• Cultural Change: Champion adoption of AI-enabled workflows through hackathons, experimentation, and rapid-prototyping initiatives that promote innovation at scale.

Education

• University of Louisiana at Lafayette

  Master of Business Administration - MBA, In progress - Project Management

• University of Phoenix

  Bachelor of Science - BS, Management

• East Texas A&M University

  Computer Science

Skills

• Project Management
• Web Services
• Asp.net Core
• Git
• Entity Framework
• Wpf
• Software Development Life Cycle (Sdlc)
• Azure Virtual Machines
• Software Engineering
• Azure Kusto
• Visual Studio
• Windows Presentation Foundation (Wpf)
• .net Core
• Xml
• Xamarin
• Microsoft Azure
• Azure
• Integration
• Metro
• Asp.net
• Javascript
• Soa
• Agile Methodologies
• Windows
• C++
• Software Development
• Microsoft Azure Machine Learning
• Scrum
• Azure Logic Apps
• Azure Devops
• Azure Key Vault
• Web Services Api
• Azure Functions
• Ios
• .net Framework
• C#
• .net
• Software Design
• Dotnet
• Web Applications