Cloud Solution Architect - Data & AI

With over 17,000 employees worldwide, the mission of the Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers achieve their business outcomes faster with technology that does more.

The Global Customer Success (GCS) organization, an organization within CE&S, is leading the effort to enable customer success on the Microsoft Cloud by harnessing leading, AI-powered capabilities and human expertise to deliver innovation solutions that accelerate business value, drive operational excellence and nurture long term loyalty.

We're actively seeking a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) who specializes in Azure Data, Analytics & AI services and solutions. As a CSA, you'll be at the forefront of driving our customers' transformation on Microsoft Azure. This customer-facing role involves owning the technical relationship between the customer and Microsoft. Your mission: help customers unlock the full potential of their Microsoft investments through architecture, implementation, and operational health engagements. Plus, we offer flexibility—work remotely up to 50% of the time or be based exclusively at Microsoft onsite. Join us in shaping the future of technology!

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 (RQs/MQs)
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 Business Applications consulting OR equivalent experience.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications (PQs)

• Business Value: The ability to convey the business needs and value of proposed solutions, plans, and risks to stakeholders and decision makers. This includes the ability to persuade and inform based on facts and alignment with goals and strategy.
• Trusted Advisership: The ability to build trusted advisor status and deep relationships across stakeholders (e.g., technical decision makers, business decision makers) through an understanding of customer needs and technologies.
• Situational fluency: Using self-awareness as a mechanism to interpret verbal and non-verbal cues to increase your ability to "read the room."
• Insightful listening: asking insightful questions to understand the customer needs, issues, business environment and drivers, and going beyond what customer has said.

Technical
• Breadth of technical experience and knowledge in foundational security, foundational AI, architecture design, with depth / Subject Matter Expertise in one or more of the following:
o Deep domain expertise in one of the Data-specific areas, such as Azure SQL Data (IaaS/PaaS), Azure Cosmos DB, deployments and migrations to the cloud, Open-source database (PostgreSQL, MYSQL) deployments and migrations, Cloud Scale Analytics (Microsoft Fabric, Power BI), and Data Governance (Microsoft Purview) OR hands-on experience working with the respective products at the expert level.
o Experience creating Data & Analytics Proof of Concepts (PoC), Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) for customers that lead to production deployments.
o Competitive Landscape: Knowledge of key Data & Analytics platforms such as AWS, GCP, Snowflake, etc.
o Software development practices like DevOps and CI/CD tool chains (i.e., Jenkins, Azure Developer Services, GitHub) and container orchestration systems (i.e., Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, Azure Kubernetes Service, GitHub).

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.

Customer-Centric Approach:
• Understand customers' overall data estate, business priorities, and IT success measures. Innovate with AI infused analytic solutions that drive business value.
• Prioritize Customer Satisfaction: Foster positive relationships and become a trusted advisor.
• Ensure Solution Excellence: Deliver solutions with high performance, security, scalability, maintainability, repeatability, reusability, and reliability upon deployment. Gather insights from customers and partners.

Business Impact:
• Drive Consumption Growth: Develop opportunities to enhance Customer Success and help customers extract value from their Microsoft investments.
• Unblock Customer Challenges: Leverage subject matter expertise to identify resolutions for customer blockers. Follow best practices and utilize repeatable IP.
• Architect modern Data & Analytics Solutions: Apply technical knowledge to design solutions aligned with business and IT needs. Create modernized Data & Analytics platform solutions with infused AI, lead POCs and MVPs, and ensure long-term technical viability.

Technical Leadership:
• Advocate for Customers: Share insights and best practices, collaborate with the Engineering team to address key blockers, and drive product improvements.
• Continuous Learning: Stay updated on market trends, collaborate with the Data, Analytics and AI technical community, and educate customers about the Azure platform.
• Accelerate Outcomes: Share expertise, contribute to IP creation, and promote reusability to accelerate customer success.