The Microsoft store is pictured in Manhattan on March 31, 2026, in New York City.
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A longtime Microsoft executive leading the software company’s development tools group, Julia Liuson, told employees that she will retire in June and become an advisor.
Liuson joined Microsoft in 1992, the same year as CEO Satya Nadella.
“We will continue building on the progress already underway to flatten teams, operate AI-first and reduce toil,” she wrote in a memo.
Her departure comes as Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, faces mounting competition from startups such as Cursor with products that rely on generative artificial intelligence models to help developers write code.
Building on relationships with AI model builders Anthropic and OpenAI, while also striving to formulate models in house, Microsoft is working to make AI a key part of its toolchain that third-party developers can use to create applications and websites.
Cursor’s annualized revenue exceeded $2 billion in February, Bloomberg reported. Nadella said in January that 4.7 million people were paying for its GitHub Copilot AI development service, up 75% year over year.
Liuson has been president of Microsoft’s developer division since 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile. She has reported to Jay Parikh, a former Meta executive who came to Microsoft in 2024. Last year, Nadella said Liuson’s team would be part of Parikh’s new CoreAI platform and tools group.
In August, Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, which Microsoft acquired in 2018 for $7.5 billion, announced plans to leave. At the time, Parikh told employees that three GitHub executives would report to Liuson.
Liuson said in a memo to employees on Wednesday that she will collaborate with Parikh on organizational changes. Liuson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Microsoft did not immediately have a comment.
Parikh said in his own memo that he has learned a lot from Liuson in the short time they’ve worked together.
Liuson arrived at Microsoft as a developer on Microsoft’s Access database, she wrote in a 2017 blog post. She was part of the team that built the first version of Visual Studio, a program in which developers write software. She was the first woman at Microsoft to become its corporate vice president of development, according to a biography on the company’s website.
