Cloud Solution Architect (Presales)

With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. We drive cross-company alignment and execution, ensuring that we consistently exceed customers’ expectations in every interaction, whether in-product, digital, or human-centered. CE&S is responsible for all up services across the company, including consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft’s portfolio of solutions and products. Join CE&S and help us accelerate AI transformation for our customers and the world.

The Global Customer Success (GCS) organization, an organization within CE&S, is leading the effort to enable customer success on the Microsoft Cloud by harnessing leading, AI-powered capabilities and human expertise to deliver innovation solutions that accelerate business value, drive operational excellence and nurture long term loyalty.

We are looking for a Presales Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) for the Support for Mission Critical (SfMC), a team within Microsoft, part of GCS, that provides solution-specific expertise designed to drive resiliency and optimum performance of a customer’s most important solutions. Presales CSAs in SfMC guide customer journeys to the cloud, readying them to innovate with AI, and providing thought leadership by constructively challenging customer thinking. You will enable customers to achieve their business objectives by positioning innovative proactive services, applying knowledge of the customer''s situation and leveraging subject matter expertise, Microsoft IP, industry/market insights and a deep understanding of customer success, ensuring solution quality, reliability and security.

This role is flexible in that you can work up to 80% 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.

Responsibilities

Customer Impact:

• Guide customer journeys to the cloud and ready them to innovate with AI.
• Provide thought leadership by constructively challenging customer thinking.
• Position and ensure delivery of Well-Architected VBDs (Microsoft IP).
• Enable cloud adoption, consumption and usage on SfMC accounts.
• Support Delivery Health Reviews and Internal Service Reviews.

Practice Impact:

• Contribute to driving the closure of new deals and support of complex renewals.
• Contribute to team targets in leading sales to delivery handovers and onboarding workloads.
• Ensure data hygiene and accurate business pipeline reporting.
• Minimize Microsoft risk on complex deals and identify overconsumption risks.

Leadership:

• Stay updated with the Mission Critical Services (MCS) offering evolution and articulate new strategies.
• Engage with local/global communities.
• Publish customer stories, contribute to team and Solution Area success.
• Share and leverage best practices across territories.
• Ensure up-to-date skills assessment and own development plan.

Sales Support:

• Support sales efforts through ideation and deal shaping, contributing to presentations, demonstrations, workshops, and proofs of concept.
• Partner with sales and account teams to create proposals with scopes and pricing that match the value proposition.
• Develop new opportunities for add-ons & upsells on existing contracts, collaborating with delivery team and contribute to transition plan execution.
• Lead discussions with delivery teams and stakeholders in new deals and support complex renewals.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND vast 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.
• Significant experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external) and leading technical projects.
• Extensive experience in presales, sales or business development.
• Broad knowledge of Microsoft Azure Technologies (IaaS, PaaS, Security).

Breadth of technical experience and knowledge, with depth / Subject Matter Expertise in one or more of the following Azure IaaS areas expected:

• Azure IaaS
• Storage
• Networking
• Compute
• High availability and disaster recovery features for IaaS components

Working experience with developing, debugging, performance tuning and supporting any of the following:

• Dev Ops and knowledge of Azure Web Apps/App Services, Web Application Firewall
• Azure PaaS, Service Fabric, Azure App Services
• AKS, Key Vault, Managed Service Identity, Azure AD App Authentication/OAuth
• Kubernetes Services/Containers
• API Management, API Connections
• Logic Apps/Function Apps
• Notification Hubs
• C#, .NET Framework/.NET Core, Java, Python or related
• Leadership, communication, and negotiation skills demonstrating ability to navigate through senior/executive stakeholders.
• Strong consulting background to bridge the gap between technical potential & business value.
• Ability to develop and deliver proof of concept (PoC) services that demonstrate the value of Microsoft solutions.
• Problem solving ability to remove blockers and drive customer satisfaction.

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and / or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire / transfer and every two years thereafter.

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.