Cloud Solution Architect - Azure Application Innovation & Migration

With over 18,000 employees worldwide, the Microsoft Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is responsible for the strategy, design, and implementation of Microsoft’s end-to-end customer experience. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers come to us not only because we provide industry-leading products and services, but also because we provide a differentiated and connected customer experience.

The Global Customer Success (GCS) organization is leading the effort to create the desired customer experience through support offer creation, driving digital transformation across our tools, and delivering operational excellence across CE&S.

Microsoft aspires to help our customers achieve their own digital transformation, leveraging the power of the Microsoft cloud solutions and services. To help drive this effort, Microsoft is investing in the creation of Customer Success dedicated team that will play a key role in helping Microsoft customers achieve this digital transformation through successful adoption of Microsoft Cloud solution and Services.

The Customer Success team will drive change management and adoption activities with key business decision makers and IT decision makers, helping reduce implementation risk, driving usage of existing solutions, and identifying opportunities to accelerate the path for customers to realize business value from their investments.

We are looking for a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) - Azure Application Innovation & Migration in our Global Customer Success organization. This pivotal role is customer-facing and encompasses a broad range of responsibilities, including the migration, design, build, and maintenance of Azure applications, with a key emphasis on problem-solving to overcome technical barriers during migration and drive customer adoption. You will be implementing technical strategies for customer success, you'll drive upskilling initiatives, guide field teams in technical execution, and actively contribute to IP creation. Your role extends to fostering collaboration across groups for the development of customer-ready content. You will act as a linchpin between field teams and the Global Customer Success organization. You'll collaborate closely with the Product group to integrate the latest advancements. Drive high priority customer initiatives in collaboration with customers and in the Microsoft field. This is also a customer-facing role, responsible for providing end-to-end technical guidance and expertise. If you're committed to driving excellence in both strategy and execution, join us in shaping the future of our Customer Experience in Azure.

This role is flexible in that you can work up to 100% from home.

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.

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 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.
• 4+ years of consultative experience along with deployment projects focusing on Application Migration and Modernization to Azure cloud, architecture, design, implementation, and/or support of highly distributed applications.
• 4+ years of experience in Enterprise-scale, cloud native and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, and technology management. 
• 4+ years of experience in .Net, Java, JavaScript/Node.js or Python development languages and related frameworks.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, 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, 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.
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect.
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate.
• Certifications in Azure Development, Azure Data Engineer Associate, and/or Azure DevOps Engineer.

Cloud Solution Architecture IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $101,200 - $194,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $130,000 - $213,200 per year.

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

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until May 8, 2024.

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.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

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

#CES #GCS

Customer Centricity

• Understand the customer's overall applications portfolio, IT and business priorities, and success measures to design robust architectures and solutions (including third-cparty solutions) using Azure PaaS, DevOps, and Advanced Application coding.
• Gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner by driving new feedback, insights, and resources across internal teams to add and prioritize. Represents the customer/partner to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) to shape products and services by providing insights across the territory. Advocates for the customer/partner at all opportunities and shares customer success stories with the wider internal team.
• Develops and expands existing impactful relationships with customer and partner architects and technical specialists, technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders. Receives and synthesizes data about customer/partner business and technical requirements, addresses them with technical architecture(s), and demonstrates and proves those solutions' capability and value through design collaboration sessions with the customer/partner. Contributes to and understands how work aligns with customer success plan and meets customer/partner needs by partnering with the appropriate internal teams and resources to deliver customer outcomes. Supports customer skilling by delivering as a trusted technical advisor to ensure customer readiness by facilitating technical discussions and enabling operational health and cloud readiness. Assesses and transfers knowledge to close customer skill gaps.
• Guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Supports definition of customer/partner conditions of success. Anticipates customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs and executes strategies to improve experience, value realization, and acceleration of customer transformation.
• Actively listens and respectfully challenges customers/partners when going in the wrong direction, presents insights and alternatives, and takes action appropriately.

Business Impact

• Identifies and anticipates issues and advises customers/partners to operate and optimize performance in accordance with Microsoft best practices. Adapts methodology and applies governance to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. Adheres to quality assurance standards and calculates risks while ensuring excellence in the design and/or delivery of solutions. Leverages standard tools to ensure accurate opportunity and milestone execution and pipeline hygiene.
• Drives customer/partner relationships to anticipate, identify, escalate, and work to resolve technical blockers to accelerate consumption and solution implementations (e.g., by application of technical capabilities). Routes non-technical issues for removal by the appropriate party. Applies broad business and technical knowledge across various architecture or other Microsoft solutions to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified technical constraints. Shapes and enhances customers' requirements.
• Proactively uses knowledge of the products, services, and value propositions of Microsoft and its competitors in customer/partner conversations to identify growth opportunities based on knowledge of customer/partner needs. Contributes to increase in consumption and aligns with Customer Success Account Management or other Account Team members on customer/partner priorities to drive growth in consumption via cost optimization, operational excellence performance efficiency, and security. Drives architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization that result in production deployment application and increase customer/partner usage and consumption. Ensures that the customer/partner's application has as few points of failure as possible. Consults and provides thought leadership for technical solution design, development, and deployment and supports the customer/partner throughout implementation to achieve value outcomes and Microsoft's Customer Promise.
• Understands industry trends and the competitor's architecture solutions and identifies Microsoft's strengths over competitive solutions to drive conversations with customers/partners and convince them of solution.

Technical Leadership

• Proactively develops technical and professional learning and development plan in alignment with and support from their manager. Role models effective technical readiness. Acts as a mentor and role model to less experienced colleagues to educate them on technical and non-technical concepts. Participates in development opportunities (e.g., Ready, Build, Ignite).
• Shares ideas, insights, and strategic technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger virtual team across Microsoft using a thorough knowledge of specific Microsoft products and their context in the competitive landscape. Participates in external technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, Webcasts, blogs, hackathons) and shares learnings with the internal team.
• Generates new ideas for changes and improvements to existing intellectual property (IP), technologies, and processes for designated customers/partners. Drives opportunities for IP reuse, best practice sharing, and consumption acceleration. Proactively identifies gaps through delivery and communicating those gaps to others (e.g., Leadership, managed intellectual property [MIP], Design, and Governance). Applies subject matter expertise to develop new IP that fills identified gaps.

Other

• Embody our culture and values