Senior Consultant - Data & AI

Overview Microsoft Industry Solutions - Global Center for Innovation and Delivery Center (GCID) delivers end-to-end solutions by enabling accelerated adoption and productive use of Microsoft technologies. An organization of well over 2000+ exceptional people, GCID presents a great opportunity for highly skilled services professionals to make a foray into consulting, solution development and delivery roles. The ideal consultant is passionate about technology, has breadth rather than specific product depth, and has the drive and courage to articulate and stand up for a great solution delivering true value for the client. As a Senior Data & AI Consultant, you will design and deliver modern, cloud-native and AI-powered data solutions that drive measurable business outcomes, deliver quality engagements with your expertise, either as an advisor, reviewer, or contributor in high profile projects to ensure customer value. The ideal candidate must have the ability to combine their technical skills, leadership skills, creativity, and customer focus to deliver great solutions to the customers and ensure they get the best out of our technologies and solutions. Consulting Delivery professionals bring subject matter and solution expertise to architectural teams, customers, and partners. They apply deep technical and business knowledge to accelerate the adoption of Microsoft devices and services by ensuring strategic, architectural, and operational alignment to customer and partner objectives. Responsibilities • Lead technical delivery of complex, cloud native and AI enabled engagements, contributing as a hands-on individual contributor and, where required, leading engineering teams to ensure high-quality, predictable outcomes. • Define and drive the technology strategy for large and complex customer engagements, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, compliant, and aligned to business objectives, architectural best practices, and Microsoft reference architectures. • Design, develop, and deploy solutions on Microsoft Azure, accelerating customer value through the effective use of Microsoft technologies, platforms, and delivery methodologies while meeting quality, time, and cost constraints. • Identifies the best practice approach for a project, across a wide scope of technical issues, and develops or reuses intellectual capital (IP) with customers, world-wide, and programs and initiatives across Microsoft. • Identifies dependencies and risks that go beyond the immediate scope and timeframe for a complex project. Develops contingency plans, risk-mitigation implementation criteria, and alternative strategies to manage short- and long-term risks and manages technical escalations. • Collaborates, as appropriate, with peers and cross-functional teams to scale the business with existing high-stake or strategic customers, by articulating/developing value propositions for strategic Microsoft products and services. • Drives AI-First data engineering principles and mindset in the team to make the best of AI tools and services while helping in orchestration, transformation, and operationalization of AI/ML-powered data solutions. • Continuously upskill self to become strong Full stack data engineer, inspire their team as much, to be able to build future-ready skills, collaborate with other specialist teams, product teams, and customers to co-create innovative solutions and help the customers tackle some of their biggest challenges. • Drives new ways of thinking, across the division and subsidiary, to improve quality, engineering productivity, and responsiveness to feedback and changing priorities. • Implement rapid prototyping and able to lead from brainstorming and whiteboarding ideas to production-ready solutions driven by AI-first mindset.  Upskill consistently to get better in this and deliver innovation for customers using Azure stacks. • Embody Microsoft  culture  and  values Qualifications Qualifications • 10+ years of experience • Bachelor's degree in computer science engineering or equivalent work experience. Higher relevant education is preferred. • Customer facing Project delivery leadership experience involving solution design, project envisioning, planning, development and deployment of complex solutions with minimum of 5 plus years. One or more of the following certifications, or other industry equivalent ones, is a plus: • Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate (DP600) • Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate (AI102) • Microsoft Certified: Azure Solution Architect Expert (AZ-305) Areas of Expertise Data Architecture & Platform Engineering • Lead enterprise data architecture/design across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments, designing scalable Data Warehouse, Lakehouse, and analytics platforms using Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse Analytics. Knowledge of Azure Databricks is a plus • Architect modern platforms using Azure Data Services, serverless and microservices architectures, including largescale data migrations, platform modernization, and multitenant, security hardened designs • Apply deep expertise across OLTP/OLAP, columnar, opensource, and NoSQL databases (e.g., Cosmos DB, Redis, Cassandra, MongoDB) with strong governance and access control models AI-First Delivery • Embed AI first principles across solution design, delivery workflows, automation, and intelligent orchestration for complex data and AI enabled programs • Own end-to-end technical execution—architecture decisions, engineering standards, quality, compliance, and delivery governance—aligning solutions to business outcomes • Help define delivery strategies, milestones, risk mitigation, recovery paths, and adoption of AI native delivery models (MLOps, intelligent pipelines) Engineering Excellence & DataOps • Champion high quality engineering practices including coding standards, architectural integrity, performance benchmarks, security, testing, observability, and optimization • Drive Data Ops and DevOps excellence using Agile methodologies, Azure DevOps, CI/CD, and automation • Promote reuse through accelerators, reference architectures, shared components, and continuous learning via certifications and emerging platforms AI / ML & Intelligent Systems • Lead AI powered data engineering, ML ready pipelines, and operationalized MLOps using Azure AI services • Apply hands-on expertise in Python, deep learning/Gen AI frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow), orchestration frameworks like LangChain/LangGraph, prompt engineering, RAG frameworks, AI Search, and agentic workflows on Azure AI stack • Integrate AI into enterprise data platforms, enabling intelligent automation and applying Responsible AI principles (fairness, governance, security, compliance, interpretability) Innovation & Technical Thought Leadership • Apply design thinking and user centric approaches to deliver high impact data and AI solutions • Track and influence emerging technologies, delivery models, and platform strategy • Build and share intellectual property (IP), reusable assets, and best practices to improve delivery predictability, quality, and efficiency Team Leadership & Mentorship • Lead and mentor engineering teams, fostering collaboration, technical excellence, and accountability • Provide guidance through design and code reviews, coaching, and feedback • Support professional development and build a strong, inclusive engineering culture Soft Skills & Mindset • Strong communication and presentation skills with the ability to engage both technical and non-technical stakeholders. • Passion for mentoring, knowledge sharing, and continuous learning. • Proven adaptability to new technologies and evolving customer requirements. • Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments. • Awareness of AI technologies and their integration into cloud solutions. Good to have: Customer Co-Innovation Mindset & Customer Enablement • Lead rapid prototyping, pilots, and early-stage production deployments for enterprise customers, accelerating time-to-value • Translate from whiteboard to production with minimal friction, engineering alongside customer teams to unblock delivery and adoption • Own troubleshooting across performance, reliability, cost, security, and data quality, delivering outcome-driven engineering in ambiguous, high-pressure environments 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.