Photo of Microsoft Store in Manhattan, New York City, March 31, 2026.
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Long time no see microsoft Julia Lewson, an executive who heads the software company’s development tools group, told employees she would leave the company in June to become an advisor.
Mr. Liuson joined Microsoft in 1992, the same year as CEO Satya Nadella.
“We will continue to build on the progress already underway to flatten teams, put AI first, and reduce labor,” she wrote in a note.
Her resignation comes as Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, faces increasing competition from startups such as Cursor with products that rely on generative artificial intelligence models to help developers write code.
Microsoft is building relationships with AI model builders Anthropic and OpenAI, working to formulate models internally, and making AI a key part of the toolchain that third-party developers can use to create applications and websites.
Cursor’s annual sales exceeded $2 billion in February, Bloomberg reported. Nadella announced in January that 4.7 million people are paying for the company’s GitHub Copilot AI development service, a 75% increase from a year ago.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Lewson has been Microsoft’s president of development since 2021. She reported to her ex Jay Parikh. Meta Nadella said last year that Lewson’s team would become part of Parikh’s new CoreAI platform and tools group.
In August, Thomas Domke, CEO of GitHub, which Microsoft acquired for $7.5 billion in 2018, announced plans to step down. At the time, Parikh told employees that three GitHub executives would report to Lewson.
Mr. Lewson said in a memo to employees Wednesday that he would work with Mr. Parikh on organizational reforms. Lewson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Microsoft could not be reached for comment.
Parikh said in his memo that he learned a lot from Lewson in the short time they worked together.
Liuson joined Microsoft as a developer of Microsoft’s Access database, he said in a 2017 blog post. She was part of the team that built the first version of Visual Studio, a program for developers to create software. She is the first woman to hold the position of vice president of development at Microsoft, according to her biography on the company’s website.
