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. Growth mindset encourages each of us to lean in and learn what matters most to our customers, to create the foundational knowledge that enables us to make customer-first decisions in everything we do. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us achieve our mission.

We are looking for a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) with experience in leading cloud transformation and developing well architected infrastructure solutions. You will work with customers on their most important Azure projects. And you will collaborate closely with the Microsoft Account teams to make our customer successful with the Azure platform.

The CSA leads the technical customer engagement that focusses on enabling workloads to migrate to cloud, leveraging Azure infrastructure capabilities. This includes architectural design sessions, building prototypes, delivering Minimum Viable Products and implementation guidance. You will work with varying customer audiences including senior customer executives, Enterprise Architects, IT Management and Developers.

Responsibilities

Understanding Customer Technical Environment  

Identifies and evaluates industry trends (customer industry verticals, information technology [IT] industry), gathers customer insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer business outcomes. Adapts business models, plans, and solutions to insights.

Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner by driving new feedback, gaps, blockers, insights, resources, etc. across territories to track, add, and prioritize, using established channels (e.g., UAT/TFT). Represents the customer to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) to shape products and services by providing insights across the territory.

Architecture Design and Deployment 

Leverages and champions an existing architecture approach to achieve Microsoft's agreed commitments to the customer. Proposes and develops new solutions to scale across multiple customers while demonstrating the business case and presenting alternative scenarios.

Uncovers, aggregates, and synthesizes data about customer business, complex technical requirements and issues (e.g., involving great length or tenacity to resolve), and various technical strategies being proposed. addresses them with win-win technical architecture(s) and demonstrates and proves the capability and business value of those solutions through design collaboration sessions with the customer.

Applies broad technical, industry, and enterprise knowledge to architecture projects to meet business and  information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified constraints. shaping and enhancing customers' requirements.

Leads customer projects that implement technical architecture(s) to enable a breadth of highly advanced and complex solutions. Provides thought leadership for technical architecture design, development, and deployment and supports/drives the customer throughout pre-sales and/or implementation.

Anticipates, identifies, and removes technical blockers (e.g., changing configurations, sample coding) through regular technical reviews and check ins to accelerate architecture implementations. Anticipates and routes non-technical issues for removal by the appropriate party. 

Adapts methodology and applies governance to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks (e.g. Well-Architected Framework, Enterprise Scale Landing Zone, Cloud Adoption Framework). Defines customer conditions of success, adheres to quality assurance, and calculates risks while designing and/or delivering solutions.

Practice Development 

Connects gaps and patterns across business and technology areas, and drives changes and improvements to existing intellectual property (IP), technologies, and/or processes that enable solutions to scale across customers. drives sales and consumption, as well as IP re-use and best practice sharing. Develops and contributes to the company stock of structured frameworks and methodologies.

Trusted Advisor 

Develops and expands existing impactful relationships with customer and architects, C-level technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders (to the extent that the customer/partner will call for consultation without being prompted). Provides direction to TDMs and builds the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs). Influences partners in technical and architectural areas.

Creates and sustains constructive tension and trust with customers by respectfully challenging their decisions and/or areas where they might do more and encouraging them to consider alternative architectures and approaches.

Leads the adoption of Microsoft architecture technologies based on analysis/differentiation of Microsoft and competitor products to influence the industry-wide direction for specific architecture(s).

Thought Leadership 

Leads virtual teams around technologies and customerchallenges by sharing ideas, insight, and strategic, technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger virtual team across Microsoft using knowledge of Microsoft architectures and their context in the competitive landscape. Acts as a mentor to multiple peers and leads initiatives to improve processes and drive efficiency.

Participates in external architect community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, Webcasts, blogs, hackathons) and shares learnings with internal team. Acts a mentor to junior colleagues by educating them on technical and non-technical concepts and sharing best practices. Demonstrates deep industry knowledge and drives recognition for Microsoft solutions through presentations and engagements with external audiences.

Customer Usage 

Leads architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization across multiple applications for the customer, resulting in production deployment application and increased customer business value. Leads initiatives to ensure that the customer's environment and applications are well-architected.

Other 

Embody our cultureand values 

Qualifications

Key qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field

Substantial experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or cloud/infrastructure technologies

Experience of working on complex, strategic customer sites, with a focus on Azure (required), Infrastructure, apps/dev, advising senior and challenging stakeholders on architecture, downstream in a consultative manner.

Advanced Technical / Solution Design certification in Public Cloud (e.g. Azure, AWS, GCP). Certification in Azure is preferred

Experience in technical sales and project management.

Combination of following skillsets

Relationship Proven track record of building deep technical relationships with senior IT executives in large or highly strategic accounts. Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solution/projects.

Problem Ability to solve customer problems through cloud technologies. 

Collaboration and Communication. Acknowledged for driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication skills. Ability to orchestrate, lead, and influence virtual teams, ensuring successful implementation of customer projects. Presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences (Senior Executives, IT management, Architects and Engineers)

 

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.