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Microsoft Consulting Services helps Microsoft customers around the world get the best outcomes from their investments in the latest Microsoft cloud technologies. We focus on empowering customers on their digital journey, from envisioning new possibilities to delivering solutions that result in targeted business outcomes and a great customer experience.

The Western Europe Area Solution Architect is a key role in Demand Generation and Opportunity Qualification for the 12 countries within the Western Europe Area providing focus on early-stage sales support. This role is involved in Account planning with other Area roles and ensures that opportunities are developed in line with Microsoft strategy and Microsoft Consulting Services priorities. The Area Solution Architect provides technical expertise predominantly, but not exclusively, during the 0-20% phase and guides sellers on potential Solutions Domain alignments. Mapped to a particular industry or solution area and interacting deeply with the local sales organization as well as Area Leadership Teams to prioritize account focus, they will have an awareness of multiple Domain Solutions & Offerings and be able to articulate what is possible and what is required to build and deploy solutions across industries.

This role also participates in the delivery of projects, generating value in the envisioning and adoption as well as the modelling, design, and implementation ramp up conversations. Must be able to hold delivery conversations with the Domain representing the Customer as well as the Area Team.

Responsibilities

The focus of the Area Solution Architect role is to Make the Market and drive customer multi-horizon Digital Transformation with a deeper focus on early-stage pre-sales in strong collaboration  with Area Sales to drive demand generation. Key accountabilities include:

Understanding Customer/Partner Technical Environment: gather customer insights and adapt business models, plans, and solutions to those insights. Socialize the resulting business solution with the key customer business sponsor and stakeholders. Use evidence-based approach for story telling of the value of Microsoft Consulting and its partners as well as customer advocacy towards Product Engineering teams.

Architecture Design and Deployment: leverage leading edge agile methodologies. Manage and resolve complex ambiguity in the requirements and constraints and documents assumptions and implications to be further clarified in the sales cycle.  Drive agreement based on the customer’s priorities. Build and documents a realistically costed, advanced/complex Solution Approach with traceability of scope, effort and expected cloud consumption. Anticipate scenarios that could slow or impede pre-sales/delivery.

Practice Development: Generate new and/or improve existing intellectual property. Connect gaps and patterns across business and technology areas to drive changes considering scale across customers. Drive the re-use of intellectual property. Participate and contribute to internal/external communities.

Trusted Advisor: develop a network of internal/external relationships with senior-level decision makers to build influence. Lead the adoption of Microsoft solutions technologies based on understanding of competitor solutions and how customer business value can be driven through Microsoft's offerings. Differentiate Microsoft's solutions in customer/partner conversations to influence the industry-wide direction for specific architecture(s).

Thought Leadership: lead virtual teams around industry scenarios,  technologies and customer/partner challenges. Participate in external architect community events and share learnings with internal teams. Act a mentor to junior colleagues.

Drive & Accelerate Cloud adoption: drive production-level Cloud Solutions in line with Customer and Microsoft strategy.

You must have ROM and BE estimation capabilities in your area of expertise. Review proposals from MCS Domains and Partners, review project deliverables and ensure that they meet the client's expectations prior to their final delivery to the client. 

Qualifications

Proven experience in one or more of the following Azure Data Platform Cloud solutions:

Big Data and Data Warehouses including Azure Synapse Analytics, Snowflake, GCP’s Big Query, AWS Redshift 

Advanced Analytics including Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Bricks, data visualization tools (i.e. PowerBI, Tableau) 

Data Science and Machine Learning (i.e. TensorFlow, Azure ML, ML Server, or other similar frameworks)  

Proven success and expertise in architecting innovative solutions in a client-facing role with ability to lead from industry scenarios. Preferable experience around following industries: Manufacturing, Energy, Banking, Retail or Public Sector.

Relationship Building. Ability to build deep relationships with senior IT and Business executives in large or highly strategic accounts. Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solution/projects.

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, Database administrators and Data Scientist)

Competitive Landscape: Knowledge of hyperscale cloud platforms and aptitude and experience to learn new technologies and understand relevant cloud trends

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

Preferable experience preselling and delivering around following industries: Manufacturing, Banking, Retail or Public Sector.

Bachelor’s degree relevant to Information Technology, Computer Science/Engineering (or equivalent)

50-75% travel within the 12 WE countries is needed to meet customer for envisioning and opportunity qualification meetings.

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.