Job Responsibilities
- Leads the adoption of Microsoft offerings based on analysis/differentiation of Microsoft and competitor products to influence the industry-wide direction for specific architecture(s).
- Drives their team in operating and optimizing complex and high-impact situations for strategic customers/partners in collaboration with internal stakeholders (e.g., Customer Services and Support, Customer Success Account Management, other Account Team members, Product Groups). Anticipates and manages business and technical risks, and adapts methodology and applies governance to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. 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 opportunity and milestone execution and pipeline hygiene.
- Proactively uses deep knowledge of the offerings, practices, products, services, solutions, and value propositions of Microsoft and its competitors in customer/partner conversations and to propose and coach others to develop new solutions to scale across multiple customers/partners while demonstrating the business case and presenting alternative scenarios. Optimizes to drive customer consumption and aligns with Customer Success Account Management or other Account Team members on customer/partner priorities to drive growth in consumption via cost optimization, operational excellence performance efficiency, and security. Creates opportunities to expand or accelerate cloud consumption (including through cloud related managed intellectual property [MIP]) and leads these customer/partner conversations. Leads architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization across multiple applications for the customer/partner, resulting in production deployment application and increased customer/partner usage and consumption. Ensures that the customer/partner's applications have as few points of failure as possible. Provides thought leadership to help drive technical solution clarity, design, development, and deployment (including with and through partner technical stakeholders) and supports the customer/partner throughout implementation to achieve value outcomes and Microsoft's Customer Promise. May influence, challenge, and support partners in investing in and adopting new technologies at scale of the customer.
- Owns complex customers/partner relationships to anticipate, identify, propose resolution, and lead removal of technical blockers through regular technical reviews and check-ins to accelerate consumption and solution implementations. Anticipates and routes non-technical issues for removal by the appropriate party. Applies broad business, technical, industry, and/or enterprise knowledge to architecture or support projects to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified constraints. Shapes and enhances customers' requirements.
Customer Centricity- Identifies and evaluates industry trends (customer industry verticals, information technology [IT] industry), gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner by driving new feedback, insights, and resources across territories to add and prioritize. Represents the customer/partner to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) to shape products and services by providing insights across the territory. Leverages feedback to develop strategic and actionable insights and presents business cases to program managers to influence product roadmaps and decision making. Shares customer/partner success stories with the wider internal team.
- Actively listens, creates, and sustains constructive tension and trust with customers/partners by respectfully challenging their decisions and/or areas where they might do more and encouraging them to consider alternative architectures/solutions and approaches.
- Guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Drives definition of customer/partner conditions of success. Anticipates customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs and helps create strategies to improve experience, value realization, and acceleration of customer transformation.
- Develops and expands existing impactful relationships with customer and partner architects, C-level technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders (to the extent that the customer/partner will call for consultation without being prompted). Provides direction to TDMs and builds the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs). Uncovers, aggregates, and synthesizes data about customer/partner business, complex technical requirements and issues (e.g., involving great length or tenacity to resolve), and various technical strategies being proposed. Addresses requirements/issues/strategies with win-win technical architecture(s) and demonstrates and proves the capability and value of those solutions through design collaboration sessions with the customer/partner. Contributes to and understands how works aligns with customer success plan and delivers customer outcomes by driving partnerships with the appropriate internal teams/resources. Supports customer/partner skilling and addressing identified capability gaps (e.g., skills, capacities) by leading discussions on technical delivery with other internal and external stakeholders as a technical thought leader to influence customer/partner readiness, and adoption and upholding of technical best practices (e.g., architecture, well-architectured principles, advanced technical skills and roles across multiple areas). May assess and transfer knowledge to close customer/partner capability gaps, strategically collaborating with and through peers as appropriate (e.g., developing targeted action plans). May identify and endorse most qualified partners to meet complex customer project needs.
Desired Candidate Profile
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 7+ 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.
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.