Cloud Solution Architect

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. To learn more about Microsoft’s mission, please visit:  https://careers.microsoft.com/mission-culture

Through our partners, Microsoft brings digital ambitions to life by helping companies empower their employees, engage their customers, optimize their operations, and transform their products. We are looking for a highly motivated and passionate individual to join the Microsoft One Commercial Partner (OCP) team as a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) for Azure Infrastructure.  Joining the OCP team as a CSA means you will be playing a critical role helping Microsoft Partners to capitalize on the $2.2 trillion-dollar Digital Transformation market opportunity by 2019 – a 60% increase since 2016. Working in OCP means you are shaping the world’s largest eco-system of technology companies working to digitally transform the world’s most innovative companies, large and small.

Azure CSAs play a critical role in working with partners to provide deep Azure technical support through solution build and first mile customer engagements including Proof of Concepts, Architectural Design Sessions (ADS), and Hackathons. The CSAs build relationships with partner technical and development resources, designing and architecting new solutions based on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and technologies. They deliver value via a portfolio of service delivery engagements optimized to accelerate partner solution builds and first mile customer wins and stand out as a Technology expert due to deep solutions knowledge. They can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft engineering teams and blackbelts often surfacing product issues, providing feedback and insights that accelerate fixes and updates.

Microsoft welcomes and embraces your individuality! The ideal candidate for the CSA role can come in many forms. This individual is someone who is passionate about technology and one who possesses a strong subset or combination of the requirements listed below.

We also embrace flexible working as a core principle of reinventing productivity, and you’ll have flexibility to work from different locations, such as your home office, Microsoft offices around the country, or customer sites. 

Responsibilities

Partner Enablement and Execution

• Technical Enablement. Jointly develop technical enablement plan with partner(s)
• Enablement Execution. Lead and/or contribute to the delivery of workshops, bootcamps, and trainings necessary to build the technical skills and expertise of partners
• Technical Engagement. Lead the execution of deep technical engagements, including Technical Briefings, Proof of Concepts, Architectural Design Sessions, and Hackathons with the goal of defining and brining new solutions to market
• Skilling and Best Practice Sharing. Network and collaborate with Microsoft’s Engineering and Global Black Belt teams on specific skill requirements for partners and the sharing of best practices
• Practice & Solution Development. Improve partners’ success in implementing solutions and/or practice development by increasing the number of FastTrack endorsed architects in the partner’s organization
• Evangelize partners’ practices and solutions in customers’ implementations via Technical briefings and Architecture Review Sessions
• Pre-Sales. Enable partners on technical pre-sales skills while supporting initial partners’ wins

Technical Upskilling and Networking

• Technical and Market Trend Acumen. Maintain technical skills and knowledge of market trends, opportunities, and competitive insights by staying abreast of various in-person and virtual events delivered by Industry thought leaders such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, ISG/Saugatuck
• Technical Networking. Invest in own LinkedIn Profile to promote expertise and experiences. Build an expansive Network of partner technical contacts, as well as internal Microsoft contacts including Engineering, Global Black belts, M&O and peer Architects
• Technical Events & Community Contribution. Attend Digital Transformation/Technology conferences such as Build. Participate in technical panels and user groups, provide insights, and contribute work that is shared across communities such as MSDN and Channel9

Qualifications

Key Experiences, Skills, and Education

Professional

Relationship Building and Problem Solving

• Proven track record of building deep sales relationships with CXOs and practice building executives in highly strategic ISV (Independent Software Vendor), MSP (Managed Service Provider), and SI (System Integrator) partner types. required
• Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solution/projects. required
• Ability to solve Partner problems through cloud technologies, leveraging internal and/or external resources. required

Collaboration and Communication

• Acknowledged for driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication skills. required
• Ability to orchestrate, lead, and influence virtual teams. Strong presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences at different levels of organizations. required

Technical

• 6-10+ years of success in consultative/complex technical sales, technology solutions/practice development, architecture, design, implementation, and/or support of highly distributed applications required

• Deep understanding of digital transformation business drivers, cloud platforms, emerging computing trends and their impact on partner practice building opportunities. required
• Enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, and technology management required
• Experience and understanding of large-scale application portfolios in enterprise-wide environments (including migration of on-premise workloads to the cloud) required

• 3-5+ years’ experience in one of the deep specializations below. required

Infrastructure. 

• Windows and Linux IaaS, Compute, Networking, Storage, Resiliency, Migration techniques, Management Tools, and DevOps, additionally good experience required (2+ years) in Containers, Infrastructure Security, and BC & DR.

Identity/Security (Azure).

• Identity, Security Architecture, Security Management and Network Security, additionally good experience required (2+ years) in Compute, Networking, Storage, Containers, Migration Technique, Resiliency and DevOps.

SAP on Azure.

• SAP Basis Architecture, NetWeaver architecture, SAP performance; SAP Basis OS/DB Migration, Sizing, HA/DR Design; SAP Operational Best Practices, version upgrades;
• RDBMS: performance query analysis, sizing, HA/DR and storage/disk design of SAP HANA;
• Linux operating systems (Suse/RHEL); Network Architecture (Cisco SAFE/Zoning models),
• Compute, networking, storage, and monitoring
• Additionally, good experience required (2+ years) in Containers, Migration Techniques, Resiliency monitoring tools, and Infrastructure Security.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or related field preferred
• Certification in one of the following technologies preferred: Cloud, mobile, web application development, cloud-native application architecture (i.e. containers, microservices, API management), modern software development techniques like DevOps and CI/CD tool chains (i.e. Jenkins, Spinnaker, Azure developer services, GitHub) and container orchestration systems (i.e. Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, Azure Kubernetes Service, GitHub). preferred

Other Experiences

• Prior work experience in a Consulting/Architecture position within a Software and/or Services company such as Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Oracle, Teradata, Netezza, SAP, Cloudera/Hortonworks, Snowflake, MapR desired

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. 

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.