Sr Cloud Solution Architecture-CTJ-Top Secret/SCI

Microsoft • Reston, VA

1d

About The Position

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. You will 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. 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.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field OR equivalent experience.
• 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.
• Clearance Verification: 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.
• Microsoft Cloud Background Check : This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
• 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 government agency customer and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law.
• To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport, or other approved documents, or verified US government Clearance

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 8+ 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, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 6+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting OR equivalent experience.
• 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

• Operate according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools (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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 initiatives (e.g., security, resilience, AI), and influences team to drive their own technical readiness.
• Act 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.
• Contribute to leading virtual teams (v-teams) around technologies and customer/partner challenges, and share 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.
• Demonstrate strong industry knowledge and increase recognition for Microsoft solutions by contributing to and sometimes leading presentations and engagements with external and internal audiences (e.g., Tech Connect, Build, Ignite).
• Contribute to intellectual property (IP) and identify patterns where no IP exists (e.g., CoPilot and AI scenarios) to help build scalable and repeatable models.
• Participate 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.
• Proactively identify gaps through delivery, communicate those gaps to relevant team members and internal/external stakeholders, and connect gaps and patterns across business and technology areas that drive changes and improvements to products, intellectual property (IP) (both existing and new), technologies, and/or processes/practices that enable solutions to scale across customers.
• Contribute to the development and modification of Microsoft's structured frameworks and methodologies.
• Provide thought leadership and innovation to customers/partners and internal communities at the local level.

Benefits

• Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

What This Job Offers

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