Cloud Solution Architecture-Azure Infra

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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 highly motivated and passionate Infrastructure Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) focusing on Azure Infrastructur. This customer-facing position is a hands-on technical role spanning across design, build, and operations with a focus on issue resolution to remove customer technical obstacles and adoption challenges.

As part of this role, you will be responsible for technical customer engagements, working with the most challenging and exciting projects within Microsoft Azure customer base. You will work with Digital Native industry customers to lead deep technical architecture discussions with senior customer executives, Enterprise Architects, IT Management and Developers. You will collaborate with a variety of internal and external teams to develop pilots and oversee implementation projects, ensuring technical blockers are removed on adoption. You will drive technical intensity of developers and create communities within customers. And you will collaborate with Product engineering to share feedback into the development of Microsoft products and help develop Azure platforms.

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 7+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, information technology (IT) consulting/support, systems administration, network operations, software development/support, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting OR equivalent experience.

Business Impact

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

Drives their team in operating and optimizing complex and high-impact situations for strategic customers/partners in collaboration with internal stakeholders (e.g., Customer Services and Support, Customer Success Account Management, other Account Team members, Product Groups). Anticipates and manages business and technical risks, and adapts methodology and applies governance to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. Adheres to quality assurance standards and calculates risks while ensuring excellence in the design and/or delivery of solutions. Leverages standard tools to ensure accurate opportunity and milestone execution and pipeline hygiene.

Owns complex customers/partner relationships to anticipate, identify, propose resolution, and lead removal of technical blockers through regular technical reviews and check-ins to accelerate consumption and solution implementations. Anticipates and routes non-technical issues for removal by the appropriate party. Applies broad business, technical, industry, and/or enterprise knowledge to architecture or support projects to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified constraints. Shapes and enhances customers' requirements.

Proactively uses deep knowledge of the offerings, practices, products, services, solutions, and value propositions of Microsoft and its competitors in customer/partner conversations and to propose and coach others to develop new solutions to scale across multiple customers/partners while demonstrating the business case and presenting alternative scenarios. Optimizes to drive customer consumption and aligns with Customer Success Account Management or other Account Team members on customer/partner priorities to drive growth in consumption via cost optimization, operational excellence performance efficiency, and security. Creates opportunities to expand or accelerate cloud consumption (including through cloud related managed intellectual property [MIP]) and leads these customer/partner conversations. Leads architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization across multiple applications for the customer/partner, resulting in production deployment application and increased customer/partner usage and consumption. Ensures that the customer/partner's applications have as few points of failure as possible. Provides thought leadership to help drive technical solution clarity, design, development, and deployment (including with and through partner technical stakeholders) and supports the customer/partner throughout implementation to achieve value outcomes and Microsoft's Customer Promise. May influence, challenge, and support partners in investing in and adopting new technologies at scale of the customer.

Customer Centricity

Develops and expands existing impactful relationships with customer and partner 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). Uncovers, aggregates, and synthesizes data about customer/partner business, complex technical requirements and issues (e.g., involving great length or tenacity to resolve), and various technical strategies being proposed. Addresses requirements/issues/strategies with win-win technical architecture(s) and demonstrates and proves the capability and value of those solutions through design collaboration sessions with the customer/partner. Contributes to and understands how works aligns with customer success plan and delivers customer outcomes by driving partnerships with the appropriate internal teams/resources. Supports customer/partner skilling and addressing identified capability gaps (e.g., skills, capacities) by leading discussions on technical delivery with other internal and external stakeholders as a technical thought leader to influence customer/partner readiness, and adoption and upholding of technical best practices (e.g., architecture, well-architectured principles, advanced technical skills and roles across multiple areas). May assess and transfer knowledge to close customer/partner capability gaps, strategically collaborating with and through peers as appropriate (e.g., developing targeted action plans). May identify and endorse most qualified partners to meet complex customer project needs.

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

Identifies and evaluates industry trends (customer industry verticals, information technology [IT] industry), gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner by driving new feedback, insights, and resources across territories to add and prioritize. Represents the customer/partner to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) to shape products and services by providing insights across the territory. Leverages feedback to develop strategic and actionable insights and presents business cases to program managers to influence product roadmaps and decision making. Shares customer/partner success stories with the wider internal team.

Guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Drives definition of customer/partner conditions of success. Anticipates customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs and helps create strategies to improve experience, value realization, and acceleration of customer transformation.

Partner Specialization

[APPLIES TO PARTNER SPECIALIZATION]Understands and anticipates solution area-specific market opportunities (e.g., competitor insights) and proactively leads initiatives to address them by supporting, assembling, and leading a v-team. Influences, challenges, and supports partners in developing scalable offerings, practices, products, and solutions, and investing and adopting new technologies at scale of the customer. May maintain relationships with non-technical senior stakeholders (e.g., sales) within the partner to understand their business model. Maintains active visibility in solution area-specific communities both to build credibility in internal/partner work and information sharing (e.g., technical updates, public facing roadmap) and to influence partners. Collaborates with internal stakeholders (e.g., engineering, sales) to provide field-based insights related to products/solutions related to functioning, pricing, implementation, and other areas.

[APPLIES TO PARTNER SPECIALIZATION]Identifies and directs attention to multiple, strategic opportunities (e.g., launch deals) that align with revenue goals, and orchestrates growth of solution utilization pipeline with partners. Leads assistance with partner and sales teams to bring clarity to specific, complex opportunities through proof of concept and technical pre-sales support.

Technical Leadership

Leads and may assemble virtual teams around technologies and customer/partner challenges by sharing ideas, insights, 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. Organizes or presents at internal events (e.g., Ready, Build, Ignite). Demonstrates deep industry knowledge and drives recognition for Microsoft solutions through presentations and engagements with external audiences. Participates in external technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, Webcasts, blogs, hackathons) and shares learnings across internal teams.

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/partner. Drives consumption acceleration, as well as IP reuse and best practice sharing. Develops and contributes to the company stock of structured frameworks and methodologies. Proactively identifies gaps through delivery, communicating those gaps to others (e.g., Leadership, managed intellectual property [MIP], Design, and Governance), and leveraging business experience to prioritize efforts. Drives strategy for new IP and collaborates with MIP, Design, and Governance to improve existing IP.

Leverages market insights to assist leadership in defining global vision by identifying relevant areas in which to drive up-skilling. Role models effective technical readiness and influences team to drive their own technical readiness. Drives and engages others to adapt to changes aligned with solution areas/services priorities. Acts as a mentor to less experienced colleagues by educating them on technical and non-technical concepts and sharing best practices.