Sr. Customer Experience Engineer

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

About The Position

The Azure Infrastructure Solutions Customer Acceleration Team (CAT) is seeking a Senior Program Manager to drive customer success, technical readiness, and ecosystem alignment for Azure Local. This role sits at the intersection of customers, partners, Microsoft account teams, support engineering, and OEMs, focusing on accelerating adoption, reducing risk, and resolving complex technical and operational challenges. You will work on high‑impact, high‑visibility customer engagements, support strategic deals and escalations, and translate real-world customer experience into scalable guidance and programmatic improvements across Azure Local. What Success Looks Like • Customers successfully deploy and operate Azure Local with reduced risk, faster time to value, and improved reliability. • Account teams see you as a force multiplier for complex opportunities and high‑touch customers. • Partners and OEMs view you as a trusted technical and operational leader. • Product and engineering teams receive clear, actionable insight grounded in real customer experience. Why Join This Team You will have the opportunity to shape Azure Local’s customer experience at scale while working directly with Microsoft’s most strategic customers, partners, and hardware ecosystem. This role offers high visibility, broad impact, and direct influence across the Azure hybrid infrastructure strategy. Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology (IT), Data Analytics/Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), or related field AND 4+ years experience in technology industry, cloud, technical support, and/or customer experience engineering OR equivalent experience.
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements is 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.

Nice To Haves

Master's Degree in Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years experience in technology industry, cloud, technical support, and/or customer experience engineering OR Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology (IT), Data Analytics/Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), or related field AND 8+ years experience in technology industry, cloud, technical support, and/or customer experience engineering OR equivalent experience.
Deep familiarity with Azure Local, Azure Arc, or hybrid cloud architectures.
Experience working with OEM hardware vendors and enterprise infrastructure ecosystems.
Background in customer escalations, enterprise deployments, or mission‑critical environments.
Experience influencing without authority in highly matrixed organizations.
2+ years of customer facing experience.

Responsibilities

Lead end‑to-end customer engagements across pre‑sales, proof-of-concept (POC), deployment, and post‑GA operations for Azure Local.
Act as a trusted technical advisor to customers, guiding architecture decisions, operational models, and deployment strategies.
Drive success for complex or escalated customers, including production‑critical environments and executive‑level engagements.
Identify risks early and lead mitigation strategies to improve deployment success and ongoing reliability.
Collaborate with systems integrators, managed service partners, and channel partners to ensure Azure Local solutions meet best practices and supportability standards.
Partner closely with OEM hardware vendors to align on validated architectures, lifecycle readiness, firmware and driver alignment, and issue resolution.
Provide actionable feedback to partners and OEMs based on customer deployments to drive continuous ecosystem improvement.
Partner with Microsoft account teams, sales, and Customer Success teams to support complex opportunities and strategic accounts.
Contribute to deal strategy and customer readiness by providing technical due diligence, architecture validation, and risk assessments.
Help accelerate customer confidence and reduce friction in Azure Local sales cycles by addressing technical and operational blockers.
Act as an escalation partner with Microsoft Support and Engineering teams for complex or systemic customer issues.
Lead or contribute to root cause analysis, corrective action plans, and long‑term remediation strategies.
Ensure learnings from customer incidents and escalations are fed back into product, documentation, and field readiness efforts.
Design and drive scalable programs, frameworks, and guidance that improve Azure Local deployment quality and operational readiness.
Influence product direction by translating customer and ecosystem feedback into actionable insights for engineering and leadership.
Support Microsoft initiatives such as Well‑Architected Framework adoption, operational readiness programs, and customer assistance initiatives.