Cloud Solution Architect - Azure Infrastructure - Microsoft

With over 17,000 employees worldwide, the Microsoft Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is responsible for the strategy, design, and implementation of Microsoft’s end-to-end customer experience. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers come to us not only because we provide industry-leading products and services, but also because we provide a differentiated and connected customer experience.

We are looking for a passionate Azure Cloud Solution Architect to drive customer initiatives on the Microsoft Azure Platform in collaboration with other colleagues, SMEs and partners. This is a customer facing role, owning the overall technical relationship between the client’s team and Microsoft Azure Platform. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth, honing your technical and collaboration skills, and deepening your cloud expertise. This role is flexible in that you can work up to [50% / up to 100% from home.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

This role is flexible in that you can work up to 100% from home.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Customer Centricity

• Gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs) and leverages these insights and existing plans to map solutions with customer/partner business outcomes. Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner by driving awareness of existing feedback, insights, and resources with internal teams to add and prioritize. Shares customer success stories with the wider internal team.
• Identifies and begins developing impactful relationships with internal teams and customer and partner technical specialists during initial preparation and ramp-up stages. Proposes viable solutions based on specific technical products. Demonstrates complex concepts and proves the capability of those solutions through design collaboration sessions with the customer/partner. Understands how work aligns with customer success plan and meets customer/partner needs by working with internal teams to deliver customer outcomes. Supports customer skilling by delivering as a trusted technical advisor to ensure customer readiness by facilitating technical discussions and enabling operational health and cloud readiness. Transfers knowledge to customers to close customer skill gaps.
• Contributes to customer satisfaction by providing a positive customer/partner experience. Demonstrates an understanding of customer/partner conditions of success. Identifies dissatisfied customers and builds remedial actions (e.g., post-mortem reviews).
• Actively listens and respectfully challenges customers/partners when going in the wrong direction and escalates appropriately.

Business Impact

• Independently identifies issues and advises customers/partners to operate and optimize performance in accordance with Microsoft best practices. Escalates issues to senior team members or manager, as needed. Applies methodology and governance to minimize business and technical risks and adhere to quality assurance while ensuring excellence in contributions to design and/or delivery of solutions. 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 engagement hygiene.
• Independently works with the customer to identify, determine root causes, and resolve blockers to accelerate consumption and solution implementation (e.g., by application of technical capabilities). Identifies non-technical issues and escalates for removal by the appropriate party. Applies business and technical knowledge of architecture or other Microsoft solutions to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified technical constraints. Helps to shape and enhance customers' requirements.
• Leverages knowledge of the products, services, and value propositions of Microsoft and its competitors in customer/partner conversations to assess customer/partner needs and independently identify growth opportunities. Leverages an existing architecture approach or reference architecture to propose a solution or achieve Microsoft's Customer Promise. Identifies opportunities to expand or accelerate cloud consumption. Participates in discussions around architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization that result in production deployment application and increase customer/partner usage and consumption. Independently consults on technical solution design, development, and deployment and supports the customer/partner throughout implementation to achieve value outcomes and Microsoft's Customer Promise.
• Understands the competitor's architecture solutions and identifies Microsoft's strengths over competitive solutions to demonstrate Microsoft's value to customers/partners.

Technical Leadership

• Leverages development opportunities (e.g., mentorships, role-based resources, trainings, internal events such as Ready, Build, Ignite) to learn new technologies and services.
• Shares ideas, insights, and technical input with virtual team members using a working knowledge of specific Microsoft architectures and other relevant products. Participates in external technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, Webcasts, blogs, hackathons) and shares learnings with the internal team.
• Supports research projects and contributes to scoping surveys for customers/partners to assess potential intellectual property (IP) needs or process changes. Supports identification of opportunities for IP reuse and consumption acceleration. Contributes to IP creation and updates by identifying gaps through delivery and communicating those gaps to others (e.g., Leadership, managed intellectual property [MIP], Design, and Governance).

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 2+ 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.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 5+ 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.
• 2+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
• 2+ years experience working on technical projects.
• Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications).

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.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.