Senior Cloud Solution Architect - CTJ - TS/SCI

Microsoft • Washington, DC

21h

About The Position

We’re seeking a Senior Cloud Solution Architect to proactively act as the voice of the customer/partner and internal communities, leveraging insights from feedback tools and systems. This role involves identifying and translating customer/partner problems into industry solutions, driving customer experience through efficient delivery, and ensuring a seamless customer journey. The architect will proactively identify, escalate, and mitigate blockers, deliver solutions in line with company methodologies, and identify new opportunities for consumption and usage expansion. Operating according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards, the role leverages market insights and demand signals, contributing to leading virtual teams with knowledge of Microsoft architectures and their competitive context. This is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact by enabling customers to realize the full potential of the cloud. The Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization, with over 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, aims to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences. CE&S drives cross-company alignment and execution to exceed customer expectations in every interaction. The Microsoft Federal organization is committed to meeting the unique mission, legal/regulatory requirements, and procurement rules of the United States Government (USG), ensuring appropriately qualified personnel are available. Microsoft Federal embraces flexibility in recruiting, hiring, and workforce assignment to meet evolving USG needs. Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and organization to achieve more, with a culture centered on a growth mindset, inspiring excellence, and encouraging leaders to bring their best each day. This growth mindset fosters customer-first decisions and drives life-changing innovations.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 4+ 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.
• Candidates must be able to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role.
• The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret/SCI Security Clearance.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role.
• Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.
• This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements.
• You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.
• This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Nice To Haves

• 4+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
• 4+ years experience working on technical projects.
• Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications)

Responsibilities

• Operates according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record (e.g., pipeline updates, time tracking).
• Collaborates across Microsoft and customer/partner teams through on-strategy delivery to achieve customer/partner objectives and increase customer/partner satisfaction.
• Proactively 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.
• 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 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 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.
• Provides feedback to Unified Delivery Team on VBDs to refine and further develop content.
• Proactively identifies 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 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, 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 existing architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes.
• Proactively captures opportunities in appropriate systems, processes, and tools, working collaboratively across the organization to execute on opportunities aligned with Microsoft's Customer Engagement Model.
• Proactively identifies, escalates, and mitigates blockers using appropriate tools and processes to accelerate solution deployment, value realization and usage/consumption.
• Applies business, technical, industry, and/or enterprise knowledge to architecture or support projects to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified constraints.
• 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 patterns of feedback across customers/partners/territories/industries and leverages them to develop strategic and actionable insights.
• Presents business cases to program managers to influence product roadmaps, decision making, bug fix prioritization, and own and drive initiatives as appropriate.
• Identifies and/or translates customer/partner problems into industry solutions aligned with Microsoft product and platform strategy, 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 adopt and use Microsoft product/platform strategy-aligned (cross-solution area) solutions.
• Builds relationships with technical decision makers (TDMs), and helps build the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs).
• Independently interacts 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.
• Drives self and guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience.
• Defines customer/partner conditions of success by leveraging an understanding of customer goals.
• Anticipates and addresses customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs, and executes strategies to improve customer experience, value realization, and acceleration of transformation.
• 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.
• 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.
• Proactively identifies gaps through delivery, communicates those gaps to 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.
• Contributes to the development and modification of Microsoft's structured frameworks and methodologies.
• Provides thought leadership and innovation to customers/partners and internal communities at the local level.
• Contributes to leading virtual teams (v-teams) around technologies and customer/partner challenges, and shares ideas, insights, and strategic, technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger virtual team across Microsoft using knowledge of Microsoft architectures and their context in the competitive landscape.
• Demonstrates strong industry knowledge and increases recognition for Microsoft solutions by contributing to and sometimes leading presentations and engagements with external and internal audiences (e.g., Tech Connect, Build, Ignite).
• Contributes to intellectual property (IP) and identifies patterns where no IP exists (e.g., CoPilot and AI scenarios) to help build scalable and repeatable models.
• Participates in 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.

Benefits

• The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $106,400 - $203,600 per year.
• There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $137,600 - $222,600 per year.
• Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.
• Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer.
• All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances.
• If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior