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.

Microsoft Federal delivers a single unified organization centered around our customer: All critical customer functions are brought under the same organizational umbrella. Bringing together the breadth and depth in our space with a razor sharp focus on serving the U.S. Government.​  Our federal customers’ expectations of how to contract, interact, and partner with us are changing, and they need to evolve at the pace of the private sector. Launching a nimble, empowered organization with comprehensive resources allows us to work hand in hand with our customers to accelerate their technology innovation, whether through R&D or through direct contracting. ​

Microsoft Federal serves the U.S. Government (USG), allowing Microsoft to support the growing government business. The organization supports the capabilities and requirements to service USG through direct sales, contracting, and billing with the USG.  Microsoft Federal entity will meet obligations of manage contracts with the USG through six business teams and three enablement teams. 

We are committed to empowering our teams, building upon our strategic investments, and delivering the technology to achieve federal missions. As our federal customers pursue their work, from defending the nation, to serving its citizens in challenging times, they look to Microsoft to help them innovate, and they expect end-to-end engagement tailored to their needs.​

Microsoft has been committed to and continues to heavily invest in supporting our Federal Government. Microsoft Federal offers our full spectrum of products and services, including hardware, software, online products, and consulting and services.

Join us and be one who helps to empower the US government!   That’s incredible reach. When you combine that with your own inspiration, plus the freedom and support to make your ideas happen, you can make a huge impact. 

Responsibilities

The Microsoft U.S. Federal Consulting Solution Architect Team is looking for a Solution Architect that can architect and build solutions for U.S. Federal Government customers to facilitate digital disruption and transformation. The Solution Architect will be responsible for sales opportunity/deal qualification, technical deal shaping, and early stage architecting of innovative and complex solutions. In addition, the Solution Architect will build speculative solutions using emerging technologies as part of digital disruption and transformation strategy.

The Solution Architect role requires both broad and deep technology knowledge and the ability to architect solutions by mapping customer business problems to end-to-end technology solutions. The candidate must have demonstrated ability to engage in discussions with senior level decision makers related to agility, business value, and end to end information technology solutions. The Solution Architect is a key enabler for other architects, consultants and partners, and must have a passion for the customer which is demonstrated through professionalism and striving for excellence in all aspects of the customer engagement and experience. 

The Solution Architect applies advanced analysis skills and experience in principals of architecture to define appropriate customer solutions. To be credible the Solution Architect must have current and deep experience with implementation of large software systems. Also, the Solution Architect should understand competitive technology and how to properly assess feasibility of migrating customer solutions from, and/or integrating with customer solutions hosted on, non-Microsoft platforms. Advanced domain knowledge in either US Federal DOD and/or Intelligence is required.

Expert level knowledge and skill with the following is highly desired:

Demonstrated excellence with presenting complex development and product topics to both business executive and technical personnel.

Proven experience selling consulting engagements which includes estimating, scoping, and writing effective statements of work that clearly set expectations and limit risk.

Proven track record of building deep technical relationships with senior executives and helping to build innovative cloud solutions in large or highly strategic accounts.

Proven track record of driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication.

Demonstrated excellence when facilitating customer design and awareness sessions that are focused on complex application solution architectures.

Ability to articulate architectural differences between solution methods and the challenges and approaches to integrating solutions built on different platforms including a working knowledge of different architectural frameworks that may be used by our customers.

Architectural understanding of and implementation experience with the following solution architecture areas: Cloud Infrastructure, Data, Artificial Intelligence and/or Business Applications.

Ability to move between high level architectural review/design and the “roll up the sleeves” level of providing architectural oversight for delivery projects.

Ability to translate business requirements into technology requirements for inclusion in contracts and/or

statements of work (SOW).

The Solution Architect helps customer account teams identify, pursue and close strategic business development opportunities while continually driving add-on business within existing projects. To accomplish this, effective fostering of executive level relationships is required. Solution Architects also play a key role in employing and developing partners as part of the overall Microsoft delivery model. The Solution Architect will also be called upon to provide Technical Quality Assurance at various points along a project lifecycle. Proven project management experience through the entire project life cycle with high customer satisfaction is a key indicator that the Solution Architect will be successful with Q/A.

Qualifications

The Solution Architect role requires an individual who is resourceful, confident under pressure, and has demonstrated skill in both crisis management and expectation management. Ideal candidates may come from customer, partner and competing organizations and may have played the following types of roles in these organizations; Senior Architect, Chief Architect, Principal Architect or CTO.

Required Qualifications:

Minimum of ten (10)+ years of relevant work experience. MBA or a relevant business degree is an added advantage for combining technical and business skills in this role. 

Enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs including scalability, security and resiliency, database migrations, and cloud technology management required,

The technical aptitude, enthusiasm and desire to adapt to change, learn new technologies and understand relevant industry and cloud trends required.

Preferred Qualifications:

Competitive Landscape: Knowledge of enterprise public cloud platforms and related industry/marketplace preferred.

Partners: Understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs preferred.

Travel: May require overnight travel of up to 75% if not local to the Washington DC area. 

The successful candidate must be a U.S. Citizen. Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of US Citizenship to meet federal government security requirements.

The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret Security Clearance.    Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.

Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment. 

Cloud Screening: Candidates must be able to successfully complete and pass a Microsoft Cloud background screening. Required Cloud Screenings will be administered on a recurring bi-annual basis.

Candidates selected for this position must comply with Federal Executive Order 14042 mandating that federal contractors and subcontractors receive the COVID-19 vaccine by being fully vaccinated before their date of hire, or work with Microsoft to receive an approved religious or medical accommodation.

The salary for this role in the state of Colorado is between $131,900 to $197,500. At Microsoft, certain roles are eligible for additional rewards, including annual bonus and stock. These awards are allocated based on individual performance. In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee’s role.

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.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.