Sr Cloud Solution Architecture-CTJ-Top Secret/SCI

Overview We are looking for a Sr Cloud Solution Architect to join our team.

In this role, you will

Proactively act as the voice of the customer/partner and internal communities leveraging relevant insights from feedback tools and systems. Identify and/or translate customer/partner problems into industry solutions. Drive self and guide other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience.

Proactively identify, escalate, and mitigate blockers using appropriate tools. Deliver solutions in line with company methodologies, ensuring proven practices and patterns are followed. Proactively identify new opportunities for Consumption, Usage & Unified expansion at scale.

Operate according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record. Leverage market insights and demand signals. Contribute to leading virtual teams using knowledge of Microsoft architectures and their context in the competitive landscape.

Proactively identify gaps that enable solutions to scale across customers.

Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day.

Growth mindset encourages each of us to lean in and learn what matters most to our customers, to create the foundational knowledge that enables us to make customer-first decisions in everything we do. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us achieve our mission.

Responsibilities

Business Impact

• Operate according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record (e.g., pipeline updates, time tracking).

Collaborate across Microsoft and customer/partner teams through on-strategy delivery to achieve customer/partner objectives and increase customer/partner satisfaction.

Proactively manage business and technical risks, adapt methodology and apply governance principles to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks.

• Execute work in compliance with industry and Microsoft guidelines and procedures.

Continuously prioritize among competing demands in their work and identifies where impact occurs with customers, ensuring alignment with business priorities and goals.

• Deliver 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 help the customer deploy for long-term organizational adoption to increase customer satisfaction and drive consumption/usage.

Guide 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.

Provide feedback to Unified Delivery Team on VBDs to refine and further develop content.

• Proactively identify 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 listen to and respectfully challenge customers/partners, building trust to then advocate for alternative architectures/solutions/approaches that shape and/or enhance customer requirements.

Identify and evaluate industry trends (e. g. , customer industry verticals, information technology [IT] industry), gather customer/partner insights (e.

g. , feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and map existing architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes.

Proactively capture opportunities in appropriate systems, processes, and tools, working collaboratively across the organization to execute on opportunities aligned with Microsoft's Customer Engagement Model.

• Proactively identify, escalate, and mitigate blockers using appropriate tools and processes to accelerate solution deployment, value realization and usage/consumption.

Apply 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 act 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.

Identify patterns of feedback across customers/partners/territories/industries and leverage them to develop strategic and actionable insights.

Present business cases to program managers to influence product roadmaps, decision making, bug fix prioritization, and own and drive initiatives as appropriate.

• Identify and/or translate customer/partner problems into industry solutions aligned with Microsoft product and platform strategy, and explain 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 help the customer/partner adopt and use Microsoft product/platform strategy-aligned (cross-solution area) solutions.

Build relationships with technical decision makers (TDMs), and helps build the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs).

Independently interact 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.

• Drive self and guide other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience.

Define customer/partner conditions of success by leveraging an understanding of customer goals.

Anticipate and address customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs, and execute 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

• Leverage 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 i