Cloud Solution Architect - AI Biz Solutions

Overview Proactively acts as the voice of the customer/partner and internal communities leveraging relevant insights from feedback tools and systems. Identifies and/or translates customer/partner problems into industry solutions. Drives self and guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Proactively identifies, escalates, and mitigates blockers using appropriate tools. Delivers solutions in line with company methodologies, ensuring proven practices and patterns are followed. Proactively identifies new opportunities for Consumption, Usage & Unified expansion at scale. Operates according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record. Leverages market insights and demand signals. Contributes to leading virtual teams using knowledge of Microsoft architectures and their context in the competitive landscape. Proactively identifies gaps that enable solutions to scale across customers. Responsibilities Business Impact Operates according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record (e.g., pipeline updates, time tracking). Collaborates across Microsoft and customer/partner teams through on-strategy delivery to achieve customer/partner objectives and increase customer/partner satisfaction. Proactively manages business and technical risks, adapts methodology and applies governance principles to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. Executes work in compliance with industry and Microsoft guidelines and procedures. Continuously prioritizes among competing demands in their work and identifies where impact occurs with customers, ensuring alignment with business priorities and goals. Delivers solutions in line with company methodologies (e.g., product offerings such as value-based deliverables [VBDs], advice, training, technical validation), ensuring proven practices and patterns are followed to prepare customers for operational readiness and achievement of their business goals and targets. Leveraging knowledge of change management proven practices and/or involving the change management team, proactively helps the customer deploy for long-term organizational adoption to increase customer satisfaction and drive consumption/usage. Guides customers/partners towards a well-architected (e.g., secure, resilient, artificial intelligence [AI]-enabled), and cost- and performance-optimized solution to increase retention and expansion opportunities. Provides feedback to Unified Delivery Team on VBDs to refine and further develop content. Proactively identifies new opportunities for Consumption, Usage & Unified expansion (especially Enhanced Solutions) at scale based on business value to customer/partner and clear understanding of the Microsoft value proposition for supported platforms to empower cloud success, foster and strengthen security and resiliency, and drive AI innovation. Actively listens to and respectfully challenges customers/partners, building trust to then advocate for alternative architectures/solutions/approaches that shape and/or enhance customer requirements. Identifies, and evaluates industry trends (e.g., customer industry verticals, information technology [IT] industry), gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps existing architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Proactively captures opportunities in appropriate systems, processes, and tools, working collaboratively across the organization to execute on opportunities aligned with Microsoft's Customer Engagement Model. Proactively identifies, escalates, and mitigates blockers using appropriate tools and processes to accelerate solution deployment, value realization and usage/consumption. Applies business, technical, industry, and/or enterprise knowledge to architecture or support projects to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified constraints. Customer Centricity Proactively acts as the voice of the customer/partner, sharing ideas, feedback, insights, success stories and strategic/technical input with Engineering teams, Product Offerings teams and internal communities leveraging relevant insights from feedback tools and systems. Identifies patterns of feedback across customers/partners/territories/industries and leverages them to develop strategic and actionable insights. Presents business cases to program managers to influence product roadmaps, decision making, bug fix prioritization, and own and drive initiatives as appropriate. Identifies and/or translates customer/partner problems into industry solutions aligned with Microsoft product and platform strategy, and explains why and/or how they meet customer/partner outcomes and return on investment (ROI) goals (e.g., via proof of concept, minimally viable product [MVP], rapid prototype) relative to competitive offerings. Proactively helps the customer/partner adopt and use Microsoft product/platform strategy-aligned (cross-solution area) solutions. Builds relationships with technical decision makers (TDMs), and helps build the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs). Independently interacts as needed with customers/partners' Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and other C-level (CXO) roles to bridge understanding of security, compliance, operational and risk requirements across BDMs, TDMs, CIO and CISO teams, appropriately engaging additional subject matter experts when deeper expertise is required. Drives self and guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Defines customer/partner conditions of success by leveraging an understanding of customer goals. Anticipates and addresses customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs, and executes strategies to improve customer experience, value realization, and acceleration of transformation. Partner Specialization Identifies and prioritizes several opportunities that align with revenue goals, and orchestrates growth of solution utilization pipeline with partners. Provides assistance with partner and sales teams to bring clarity to specific opportunities through proof of concept and technical pre-sales support. Understands solution area-specific market opportunities (e.g., competitor insights) and collaborates with Global Partner Solutions (GPS) business stakeholders to lead and execute initiatives to translate opportunities into actions. Proactively guides and supports partners in developing repeatable offerings, practices, products, and solutions. Advises the partner throughout initial strategic customer implementations. Technical Leadership Leverages market insights and demand signals to assist leadership in identifying relevant areas in which to drive up-skilling and/or accreditations based on demand. Role models technical readiness, both depth-aligned to solution area priorities and breadth-aligned to Customer Success Unit (CSU)/corporate initiatives (e.g., security, resilience, AI), and influences team to drive their own technical readiness. Acts as a mentor, leading readiness and upskilling activities in the team/organization by educating colleagues on technical and non-technical concepts and sharing proven practices. Contributes to leading virtual teams (v-teams) around technologies and customer/partner challenges, and shares 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. Demonstrates strong industry knowledge and increases recognition for Microsoft solutions by contributing to and sometimes leading presentations and engagements with external and internal audiences (e.g., Tech Connect, Build, Ignite) Contributes to intellectual property (IP) and identifies patterns where no IP exists (e.g., CoPilot and AI scenarios) to help build scalable and repeatable models. Participates in external technical and non-technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, webcasts, blogs, hackathons) that elevate the Microsoft brand and shares learnings across internal teams. Proactively identifies gaps through delivery, communicates those gaps to relevant team members and internal/external stakeholders, and connects gaps and patterns across business and technology areas that drive changes and improvements to products, intellectual property (IP) (both existing and new), technologies, and/or processes/practices that enable solutions to scale across customers. Contributes to the development and modification of Microsoft's structured frameworks and methodologies. Provides thought leadership and innovation to customers/partners and internal communities at the local level. Qualifications Driving Customer Outcomes - Understanding and mapping customer requirements to the company's offerings effectively. Identifying opportunities, translating customer needs into tailored solutions, ensuring that products or services precisely meet customer expectations, resulting in high levels of satisfaction and success. • Business Relationship Management - The ability to develop and maintain positive working relationships with supervisors, staff, managers, customers, and vendors. This includes expressing empathy and compassion when dealing with the needs and problems of others, being approachable, taking time to address the concerns of coworkers, and treating others with respect and dignity. • Change Management - The ability to define and implement procedures and/or technologies to deal with changes in the environment. This may include adapting to change, controlling change, and/or affecting change. • Customer Advocacy - Knowledge of Customer Advocacy, a continuing focus on the requirements of the company’s customers, anticipating their needs, remaining sensitive to customers while performing services for them, being responsive to customer requests, generally working on their behalf. • Trusted Advisor - The ability to build trusted advisor status and deep relationships across stakeholders (e.g., technical decision makers, business decision makers) through an understanding of customer needs and technologies. Leading with Technical Intensity - Being the trusted technical advisor to the customer, prioritizing technical skills growth aligned with our cloud strategy, and infusing technical insight into helping the customer make the right business decisions. • Architecture Design - The ability to apply reference architecture and patterns for a variety of solutions (e.g., advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, big data, Internet of Things, modern business intelligence and analytics, modern applications, data platform modernization, data warehousing, business intelligence and analytics, etc.). • Security Solutions - Knowledge of security concepts and relevant Microsoft solutions (e.g., Azure Active Directory, Multi-Factor Authentication). • Technical Solution Development - Knowledge of the process of developing technical solutions and ability to design, customize, or reapply technical solutions based on customer/partner needs or demands. • Technology Industry Knowledge - Knowledge of trends, direction, new products, and changes in the technology as it applies to a particular area of focus, as well as specific knowledge about hardware, software, and services. Understanding the Business - Having a firm grasp of the Microsoft strategy, consumption, and support and connecting that to customer outcomes, using data to find new opportunities and demonstrate customer success, and leverage internal systems to accurately capture the state of the customer. • Operational Excellence - The ability to apply principles, systems, tools, and strategic insights to sustainably improve key performance metrics (KPIs) and drive operational efficiencies. • Opportunity Identification - The ability to understand customer needs and identify opportunities for additional products and services. This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.