Sr. Director Cloud Solution Architect

Microsoft•,

2d•$130,900 - $272,300

About The Position

This role oversees a team of Cloud Solution Architects, focusing on customer advocacy, problem-solving, and solution innovation, particularly leveraging Copilot and AI Business Solutions. The position involves coaching the team on identifying and mitigating blockers, driving operational excellence, and preparing complex customers for operational readiness and business goal achievement. A key aspect is driving the adoption and expansion of Copilot and AI solutions at scale, ensuring alignment with company methodologies and best practices. The role also includes people management responsibilities, such as employee growth, development, project execution, and performance management.

Requirements

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 equivalent experience.
3+ years people management experience, including managing consultant practice managers, technical sales managers, and/or technical architect managers.
Authorization to work in the United States that does not now or in the future require employer sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, 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, Liberal Arts, 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, teams, or functions.
Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications).
5+ years people management experience, including managing consultant practice managers, technical sales managers, and/or technical architect managers.

Responsibilities

Anticipating, identifying, escalating, and mitigating blockers using appropriate tools and processes to accelerate solution deployment, value realization, and usage/consumption for complex customers/scenarios.
Coaching the team on proactively applying broad business, technical, industry, and/or enterprise knowledge to architecture or support projects to meet business and IT requirements and resolve identified constraints.
Operating according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record.
Orchestrating and collaborating across Microsoft and customer/partner teams through on-strategy delivery to achieve customer/partner objectives and increase customer/partner satisfaction.
Anticipating and managing business and technical risks, adapting methodology and applying governance principles to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks.
Executing work in compliance with industry and Microsoft guidelines and procedures.
Continuously prioritizing among competing demands in their work and identifying where impact occurs with customers, ensuring alignment with business priorities and goals.
Delivering 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 helping the customer deploy for long-term organizational adoption to increase customer satisfaction and drive consumption/usage.
Guiding complex customers/partners towards a well-architected (e.g., secure, resilient, AI-enabled), and cost- and performance-optimized solution to increase retention and expansion opportunities.
Providing guidance to the team on articulating the value of Unified and supporting sellers, partnering with account teams to build consumption plans aligned with appropriate services.
Leading efforts to provide feedback to the Unified Delivery Team on VBDs to refine and further develop content.
Proactively identifying and anticipating 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.
Executing change management to ensure team members develop thorough understanding of customer's business and operations to advise on potential solutions.
Strategically consulting with, actively listening to and respectfully challenging customers/partners, building trust to then advocate for alternative architectures/solutions/approaches that shape and/or enhance customer requirements.
Identifying, anticipating, and evaluating industry trends (e.g., customer industry verticals, IT industry), gathering customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and mapping both existing and novel architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes.
Capturing opportunities in appropriate systems, processes, and tools, working collaboratively across the organization to execute on opportunities aligned with Microsoft's Customer Engagement Model.
Focusing on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience.
Realizing customer/partner conditions of success by leveraging an understanding of customer goals.
Anticipating, addressing, and leading customer confidence calls to resolve customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs, and creating and executing strategies to improve customer experience, value realization, and acceleration of transformation.
Proactively identifying and/or translating customer/partner problems into industry solutions aligned with Microsoft product and platform strategy, creating or improving an existing business model, and explaining 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 helping the customer/partner accelerate their adoption and use of Microsoft product/platform strategy-aligned (cross-solution area) solutions.
Building relationships with, and providing direction to C-suite level technical decision makers (TDMs) up to the C-suite level, and building the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs).
Elevating interactions 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 acting 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.
Identifying and aggregating patterns across customers/partners/territories/industries and leveraging them with relevant industry perspective to develop strategic and actionable insights.
Presenting business cases to program managers to advocate for and influence product roadmaps, decision making, bug fix prioritization, and owning and driving initiatives as appropriate.
Actively orchestrating initiatives.
Leveraging an expansive knowledge of the partner portfolio in their respective solution areas to select and champion the most qualified partners to fulfill complex customer project or needs.
Collaborating with Global Partner Solutions (GPS) business stakeholders and Partner Technology Specialist (PTS) leadership in order to lead and oversee the execution of initiatives to translate opportunities into action.
Fostering technical and solutions coherence across Microsoft partner and sales ecosystems to ensure precise alignment for a specific customer opportunity.
Identifying and prioritizing opportunities that resonate with the organization's strategic revenue goals.
Directing and elevating the support provided by partner and sales teams to deliver decisive, influential guidance for specific opportunities through proof of concept and technical pre-sales support.
Delivering success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
Proactively identifying and anticipating gaps through delivery, communicating those gaps to relevant team members and internal/external stakeholders, and connecting 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.
Developing and contributing to modifications of Microsoft's structured frameworks and methodologies.
Providing thought leadership and innovation to customers/partners and internal communities at the worldwide level.
Leading, mentoring, and potentially assembling 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.
Demonstrating deep industry knowledge and driving recognition for Microsoft solutions by leading presentations and engagements with external and internal audiences (e.g., Tech Connect, Build, Ignite).
Contributing to and collaborating on intellectual property (IP) and proactively identifying patterns where no IP exists (e.g., CoPilot and AI scenarios) to help build scalable and repeatable models.
Participating in and leading external technical and non-technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, webcasts, blogs, hackathons) that elevate the Microsoft brand, sharing learnings across internal teams and leading their team to do the same.
Leveraging 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 modeling 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 influencing team to drive their own technical readiness.
Acting 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.
Ensuring team members dedicate time to continuous upskilling efforts, monitoring their efforts and providing guidance where appropriate.