Principal AI Apps Cloud Solution Architect

Microsoft • Washington, DC

2d

About The Position

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.
We are seeking a highly experienced AI Apps Cloud Solution Architect – Cloud & AI to join our Federal organization. This role requires deep technical expertise across Azure workloads, specifically with AI, Foundry, application services, and GitHub Copilot, and a passion for helping enterprise customers solve complex challenges and accelerate their digital transformation. This Cloud Solution Architect will work with the customer’s architects, developers and IT staff to build new AI-infused applications hosted on Azure, modernize existing Azure applications, or migrate applications to Azure and enhance them with AI.
The Microsoft Federal organization was established to address the unique mission, legal/regulatory requirements, and procurement rules and processes of the United States Government (USG). Microsoft Federal is committed to ensuring its resources – including appropriately qualified, experienced, and certified personnel (with necessary security clearances or otherwise) are available as needed to meet USG evolving needs. To that end, Microsoft embraces, as a mission-critical philosophy, flexibility in the recruiting, hiring, and workforce assignment of Microsoft Federal personnel. Microsoft Federal personnel can expect to serve in various roles in the Microsoft Federal organization during the course of their career to meet evolving USG needs, regardless of segment – Civilian, Defense, or Intelligence community.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, 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.
• Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of U.S. citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local United States governments agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet these legal requirements, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport.
• Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This role will require access to information that is controlled for export under U.S. export control regulations, potentially under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations or the Export Administration Regulations. As a condition of employment, the successful candidate will be required to provide proof of citizenship, U.S. permanent residency or other protected status under 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(3) for assessment of eligibility to access the export-controlled information. To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport.
• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 12+ 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 Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 8+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
• 6+ years experience leading technical projects.
• Comfort and actively uses code/script generation tools like GitHub Copilot, Claude, Opus, Codex
• Competitive Landscape: Knowledge of enterprise public cloud platforms and related industry/marketplace
• Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications).

Responsibilities

• Delivers 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 complex 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 helps the customer deploy for long-term organizational adoption to increase customer satisfaction and drive consumption/usage. Guides complex 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. Articulates the value of Unified and supports sellers, partnering with account teams to build consumption plans aligned with appropriate services. Provides feedback to Unified Delivery Team on VBDs to refine and further develop content.
• Proactively identifies and anticipates new cross-solution 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. Strategically consults with, actively listens to, and respectfully challenges customers/partners, building trust to then advocate for alternative architectures/solutions/approaches that shape and/or enhance customer requirements. Identifies, anticipates, and evaluates industry trends (e.g., customer industry verticals, information technology [IT] industry), gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps both existing and novel architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Proactively anticipates and captures opportunities in appropriate systems, processes, and tools, working collaboratively across the organization to execute on opportunities aligned with Microsoft's Customer Engagement Model.
• Anticipates, identifies, escalates, and mitigates blockers using appropriate tools and processes to accelerate solution deployment, value realization and usage/consumption for complex customers/scenarios. Proactively 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.
• Operates according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record (e.g., pipeline updates, time tracking). Orchestrates and collaborates across Microsoft and customer/partner teams through on-strategy delivery to achieve customer/partner objectives and increase customer/partner satisfaction. Proactively anticipates and manages business and technical risks, adapts methodology and applies governance principles to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. Executes work in compliance with industry and Microsoft guidelines and procedures. Continuously prioritizes among competing demands in their work and identifies where impact occurs with customers, ensuring alignment with business priorities and goals.
• Proactively identifies and/or translates customer/partner problems into industry solutions aligned with Microsoft product and platform strategy, creates or improves an existing business model, and explains 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 helps the customer/partner accelerate their adoption and use of Microsoft product/platform strategy-aligned (cross-solution area) solutions. Builds relationships with, and provides direction to technical decision makers (TDMs) up to the C-suite level, and builds the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs). Leads and elevates interactions as needed with customers/partners' Chief Information Office (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.
• Proactively acts 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. Identifies and aggregates patterns of feedback across customers/partners/territories/industries, and leverages them with relevant industry perspective to develop strategic and actionable insights. Presents business cases to program managers to advocate for and influence product roadmaps, decision making, and bug fix prioritization, and own and drive initiatives as appropriate.
• Drives self and guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Drives the realization of customer/partner conditions of success by leveraging an understanding of customer goals. Anticipates, addresses, and leads customer confidence calls to resolve customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs, and creates and executes strategies to improve customer experience, value realization, and acceleration of transformation.
• Identifies and prioritizes opportunities aligned with revenue goals and orchestrates the growth of the solution utilization pipeline with partners. Provides support to partner and sales teams by bringing clarity to opportunities through proof-of-concept development and technical pre-sales engagement.
• Understands solution area-specific market opportunities (e.g., competitor insights) and collaborates with Global Partner Solutions (GPS) stakeholders to lead and execute initiatives that translate opportunities into actionable plans. Proactively guides and supports partners in developing repeatable offerings, practices, products, and solutions, and advises partners through initial strategic customer implementations.
• Leverages 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 initiatives (e.g., security, resilience, AI), and influences team to drive their own technical readiness. Acts as a mentor, leading readiness and upskilling activities in the team/organization by educating colleagues on technical and non-technical concepts and sharing proven practices.
• Leads, mentors, and may assemble virtual teams (v-teams) around technologies and customer/partner challenges, sharing ideas, insights, and strategic, technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger v-team across Microsoft using knowledge of Microsoft architectures and their context in the competitive landscape. Demonstrates deep industry knowledge and drives recognition for Microsoft solutions by leading presentations and engagements with external and internal audiences (e.g., Tech Connect, Build, Ignite) Contributes to and collaborates on intellectual property (IP) and proactively identifies patterns where no IP exists (e.g., CoPilot and AI scenarios) to help build scalable and repeatable models. Participates in and leads external technical and non-technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, webcasts, blogs, hackathons) that elevate the Microsoft brand and shares learnings across internal teams.
• Proactively identifies and anticipates gaps through delivery, communicates those gaps to and influences relevant team members and internal/external stakeholders, and connects gaps and patterns across business and technology areas that drive changes and improvements to products, IP (both existing and new), technologies, and/or processes/practices that enable solutions to scale across customers. Develops and contributes to modifications of Microsoft's structured frameworks and methodologies. Proactively provides thought leadership and innovation to customers/partners and internal communities at the worldwide level.
• Build trusted relationships with IT executives and business leaders to shape their Cloud and AI strategy, acting as a technical advisor and champion for customer success.
• Lead and coordinate across Microsoft, partner, and customer technical teams to manage dependencies, technical risks, and delivery milestones across complex engagements.
• Lead architectural design sessions and guide the implementation of secure, scalable, and resilient solutions using Microsoft best practices and frameworks such as CAF and WAF.
• Drive technical excellence across Azure workloads—particularly AI, Foundry application services, and GitHub Copilot—ensuring mission-critical workloads are optimized for performance, security, and production-scale AI readiness.
• Align technical delivery to customer success plans and consumption priorities, ensuring solutions deliver measurable business value and long-term platform adoption.
• Accelerate Azure consumption and customer outcomes by developing repeatable intellectual property (IP), resolving technical blockers, and providing delivery oversight for key engagements.
• Collaborate with internal teams and partners to design impactful delivery proposals and support execution.
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes and executive-level messaging for senior stakeholders.
• Contribute to Microsoft’s technical community by mentoring peers, sharing insights, and serving as a spokesperson in internal and external forums.
• Maintain advanced certifications and deep technical expertise across priority workloads such as Azure AI Foundry, GitHub, and App Services.
• Inspire customer innovation by helping customers adopt AI at scale and guiding them through their transformation journey.
• Demonstrate a growth mindset by continuously developing technical and professional skills and contributing to a culture of learning and excellence.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees