Strategic Partnerships Technology Lead

As a company, Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We empower our own people to achieve more and make a difference in the world. Join us and lead transformational impact with our top customers. The Strategic Partnerships Digital Natives Team at Microsoft is at the leading edge of our business (and industry) and one of the fastest growing and most exciting groups in the Company.  

We operate like a “startup” within Microsoft and the team driving this initiative is incredibly entrepreneurial and high-performance. Senior leaders across Microsoft are making an incredible commitment to this initiative and we are rapidly scaling this program. Top talent is at the center of our strategy and are looking for new talent to join our expanding team.    

The most successful Strategic Partnership Technology Leads are ultra-resourceful, master orchestrators of virtual teams, and exceptionally curious to listen and learn from their customers. These attributes allow them to advise confidently and elevate their customer’s business and build trust in building their products with the power of the Microsoft Platform. This role offers an incredible opportunity to accelerate your career by driving business impact that can change the future. Be a part of a transformative, learning culture that drives innovation. The ideal candidate will act as a trusted technology advisor with a consultative mindset who thrives in agile, entrepreneurial environments and turns big ideas into scalable solutions. 

Responsibilities

 

• Building strategic technical partnerships early in the sales cycle with strategic startups and cloud native companies to accelerate their growth and build new solutions on Azure. Leveraging understanding of the customers’ technical product strategy and business priorities, to craft conceptual architectures on Azure and create credible cloud consumption forecasts
• Understanding customers' overall cloud strategy, technology, business priorities and success measures and advise on solutions (Microsoft Azure and 3rd party solutions) from a broad technical domain of Infrastructure, Applications, Build/Release   
• Develop deep relationships with customer executive technical decision makers, to drive long-term strategic partnerships with Microsoft.
• Sales Achiever - Achieve results by understanding digital transformation drivers and customer priorities. Identify new opportunities and help customers accelerate their growth for their own benefit as well as their customers.
• Inspire and influence - Business and Technical decision makers, building trust with stakeholders and translating Microsoft solutions into business impact and outcomes that accelerate the customer’s growth.
• Sales Challenger - Continuously build industry and technical knowledge. Bring innovative industry solutions, benchmarks and references to C-level executives that drive greater efficiencies, optimization and increase customer affinity.
• Deal Orchestrator - Orchestrate virtual deal team and all Microsoft resources maximizing revenue opportunity and driving deals forward, building and leveraging repeatable offerings to accelerate and win deals.
• Executive presence – Capable of developing and maintaining relationships at C-Level and above through relevance, industry knowledge and exceptional communication skills.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 6+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 8+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR 10+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR equivalent experience. Additional or preferred qualifications10+ years technical pre-sales, technical consulting, or technology delivery, or related experience OR equivalent experience.8+ years experience with cloud and hybrid, or on premises infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, industry standards, and/or technology management.Certification in relevant technologies or disciplines (e.g., Office 365, Power BI, Azure Architect and Development exams, Cloud Platform Technologies, Information Security, Architecture). 

Knowledge and Skills:   

• Demonstrable success in consultative/complex technical sales and deployment projects, architecture, design, implementation, and/or support of highly distributed applications.  

• Relationship Building. Proven history of building deep technical relationships with C-Level and senior 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, navigating conflicts and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication skills. 

• Understanding of the Digital Native landscape and more broadly software development companies (SaaS and Product-led companies).  

 

Technical Experience:   

• Technical experience with cloud scale, building infrastructure foundations and producing architectural designs, with an emphasis on Open Source and at-scale systems.  

• Deep experience and expertise in Well Architecture Framework and Cloud Adoption frameworks, ability to hold detailed conversations on reliability and resiliency, scalability, security, performance optimization and cost management, container and container orchestration such as Kubernetes, observability and Infrastructure as code. 

• Competitive Landscape: High level understanding of capabilities on competitive cloud platforms like AWS and GCP. The technical aptitude and experience to learn new technologies, understand relevant cloud trends and keep up with modern cloud trends.  

• Experience in helping customers optimise cloud environments, including knowledge of commercial and technical optimization approaches and FinOps best practices.  

 

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. 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.