Senior Cloud Solution Architect

Microsoft • Raleigh, NC

6d • $119,800 - $261,000

About The Position

Microsoft Silicon Cloud Hardware Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) is the team behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” mission. SCHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's over 200 online businesses including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Skype, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform globally with our server and data center infrastructure, security and compliance, operations, globalization, and manageability solutions. Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for passionate, high-energy engineers to help achieve that mission.
We are looking for an experienced cloud technology professional to join the Silicon Cloud Team, providing subject matter expertise on cloud architecture, solutions and security. The Senior Cloud Solution Architect will design and implement advanced and secure cloud solutions, impacting hybrid cloud systems around the globe, while collaborating with a dedicated group of cloud experts embedded within the Microsoft Silicon engineering organization. This role will also be responsible for embedding security best practices into architecture designs, ensuring compliance with corporate security standards, driving secure-by-design principles, and mitigating risks across cloud platforms.

Requirements

• Minimum Qualifications: Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 1+ year(s) technical engineering experience OR Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years technical engineering experience OR equivalent experience.
• Other Requirements: 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.
• This role will require access to information that is controlled for export under export control regulations, potentially under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or Export Administration Regulations, the EU Dual Use Regulation, and/or other export control regulations. As a condition of employment, the successful candidate will be required to provide either proof of their country of citizenship or proof of their US. residency or other protected status (e.g., under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)) for assessment of eligibility to access the export-controlled information. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport. Lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees may verify status using other documents, where applicable.

Nice To Haves

• Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ years technical engineering experience OR Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience OR equivalent experience.
• 7+ years technical experience working with large-scale cloud or distributed systems.
• Direct experience with threat modeling and applied experience with the Azure Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework.
• Knowledge of cloud security and identity technologies (for example, Microsoft Entra ID, multi-factor authentication) and compliance standards relevant to enterprise cloud (ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2, NIST 800-53).
• Working proficiency with infrastructure-as-code and policy-as-code, and with scripting or query languages (PowerShell, Python, KQL).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Certification in one or more of the following: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, Google Professional Cloud Architect, or equivalent cloud certifications.
• Experience designing cloud or hybrid solutions, including direct experience architecting on Microsoft Azure or another major cloud platform.
• Experience applying secure-by-design principles and cloud security practices, including identity and access, network security, and data protection, in the design of cloud solutions.
• Experience developing and documenting architecture standards, reference architectures, or governance practices, and driving their adoption across engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Design Azure cloud and hybrid architectures for the organization: scalable, secure, resilient, cost-efficient solutions across core Azure domains, translating business and technical requirements into concrete, buildable designs.
• Build security into your architectures, using threat modeling to identify risks and mitigations up front, applying secure design patterns, identity and access controls, data protection, and validating designs with Azure-native tooling (Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Sentinel, Azure Security Center).
• Establish and document cloud architecture and security standards, reference architectures, and secure design patterns, turning your design work into authoritative guidance that ensure consistency while optimizing for performance, security, and cost.
• Drive adoption of standards and guardrails through influence, setting the patterns and enablement that make the secure, well-architected choice the default across engineering teams, and enforcing them through policy-as-code with Azure Policy.
• Serve as the authoritative advisor on cloud architecture and security: conduct design reviews, resolve risk and trade-off decisions, and guide teams on secure patterns without slowing delivery.
• Apply AI to accelerate the work, using AI assisted tooling across architecture design, threat modeling, review, and helping raise the bar for how the team adopts AI.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration with partner teams across the company on reviews, dependencies, and shared initiatives.

Benefits

• Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

What This Job Offers

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