Director, Cloud Solution Architect - Applications

We are looking for a highly motivated and experienced Director, Cloud Solution Architect - Applications to manage a technical team and to drive the Azure Infrastructure Platform strategy for the Customer Success organization in our Financial Services Industry.  

The Director, Cloud Solution Architect - Applications manages the Azure Customer Success Application business and team (e.g., people leadership, scorecard attainment, customer relationships, etc.) by delivering against team targets, achieving business metrics, ensuring in class customer satisfaction and ensuring the team delivers on Microsoft's Customer Promise. The Director, Cloud Solution Architect - Applications Innovation holds teams accountable for proactively using deep knowledge of the solutions, delivering on technical offerings e.g. Value Based Delivery (VBD) offerings, and the  value propositions of Microsoft Azure application solutions.

Microsoft aspires to help our customers achieve their own digital transformation, leveraging the power of Microsoft Azure solutions and support offerings. To this end, Microsoft invests in a dedicated Customer Success team that will help Microsoft customers digitally transform and successfully realize their business outcomes.    

Check out all our products at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us

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, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 8+ years experience in cloud/application technologies, information technology (IT) consulting/support, application development (C#, .NET, etc), 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.
• 6+ years technical experience with Azure or cloud competitor solutions

Other Requirements

This position requires verification of citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local [or applicable country] government agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• 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, 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.

Cloud Solution Architecture M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $129,200 - $248,800 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 $162,000 - $268,900 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 August 14, 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.

People Management

• Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
• Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
• Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
• Care - Attract and retain people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

Customer Centricity

• Provides support and guidance for the team in identifying and evaluating trends (e.g., industry, technology) and gathering customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, landscape) to map architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Represents the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner through escalation across broader teams and with customers, with emphasis on feedback/insights and removing blockers to accelerate value. Coaches team to represent the customer/partner to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) to shape products and services, and supports the team in providing insights across the territory. Drives the team to leverage feedback to develop strategic and actionable insights and influence product roadmaps by presenting business cases to program managers. Shares customer/partner and team member success stories and learnings with the wider internal team.
• Supports and guides team in developing and expanding existing impactful relationships with customer and partner architects, C-level technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders. Provides coaching on how to build the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs). Provides coaching to help employees facilitate effective customer conversations and prove the capability and value of solutions through design collaboration sessions with the customer/partner. Provides real-time coaching in live customer scenarios to improve team performance and gather insights across customer interactions. Understands how the team's work aligns with customer success plans and enables the team to deliver customer outcomes by driving partnerships with the appropriate internal teams/resources. Builds a relationship with peers locally and across the Area by actively participating in account planning, consumption and support planning, and resource planning. Ensures employees are equipped with the capabilities and means to support customer skilling and provide thought leadership in discussions on technical delivery with internal and external stakeholders to influence customer readiness. Seeks out opportunities to contribute to One Microsoft strategies, role modelling collaboration and accountability.
• Coaches team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Drives team to clearly define customer/partner conditions of success. Drives customer health within the territory and accelerates unified support contract coverage where applicable. Anticipates customer dissatisfaction and unmet needs and develops strategies to improve experience, value realization, and acceleration of customer transformation. Coordinates transformative delivery across customers/partners and shares these practices so others can leverage and scale. Oversees the creation of strategies that improve customer/partner experience.
• Actively listens and acts as a catalyst to create and sustain constructive tension and trust with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders by their decisions and/or areas where they might do more and encouraging them to consider alternative architectures/solutions and approaches. Oversees team to execute customer/partner engagements leveraging the challenger mindset. 

Business Impact

• Drives adherence to Microsoft standards and recommended practices by setting expectations for the team around methodology and governance to ensure that the team identifies, communicates, and minimizes business and technical risks. Ensures governance of technical work, including robust architectures that are validated and delivered in line with practices. Ensures that teams leverage standard tools to maintain accurate opportunity and milestone execution and pipeline hygiene.
• Drives the team to apply business and technical capabilities in complex customer/partner relationships to anticipate, identify, propose resolution, and lead removal of technical blockers through regular technical reviews and check-ins to accelerate consumption and solution implementations and customer outcomes. Identifies patterns in blockers across business areas or a territory. Coaches team on practices for handling escalations.
• Manages the business (e.g., scorecards, forecasting) by delivering against team targets, achieving business metrics, and ensuring the team delivers on Microsoft's Customer Promise. Holds teams accountable for proactively using deep knowledge of the products, services, and value propositions of Microsoft and its competitors in customer/partner conversations and for developing new solutions to scale across multiple customers/partners while demonstrating the business case and presenting alternative scenarios. Coaches team to lead solution design, resilience reviews, and technical optimization that results in production deployment application and that increases customer/partner usage, consumption, and target metrics. Creates opportunities to expand or accelerate cloud consumption (e.g., through cloud-related managed intellectual property [MIP]) and coaches the team to lead these customer/partner conversations. Works across teams to seek out and leverage Microsoft insights that strengthen and fuel new commercial growth and consumption. Influences and complex partners to grow or scale the business with strategic/high-potential opportunities.
• Provides team with a holistic perspective of customer/partner challenges, industry trends, and competitor architectures to allow team members to engage with customers/partners, demonstrate Microsoft's value, and develop counter strategy.

Technical Leadership

• Fosters a continuous technical self-learning culture and community sharing of stories by encouraging and empowering the team to share learnings, and by establishing a cadence (e.g., internal technical brainstorming calls, presenting latest challenges in staff meetings) to calibrate on challenges and trends that impact the team and other peer teams. Leverages market insights to assist leadership in defining area vision by identifying relevant areas in which to drive up-skilling. Contributes to technical strategy for the business. Role models effective technical readiness and influences team to drive their own technical readiness. Drives and engages others to adapt to changes aligned with solution areas/services priorities, and encourages team to build skills relevant to their market. Acts as a mentor to colleagues by educating them on technical and non-technical concepts and sharing practices. In partnership with the learning lead, removes blockers to support learning across teams.
• Models how to engage constructively and transparently with the technical and/or business community locally and globally. Participates in management communities (e.g., manager excellence community) to evolve adaptive engines of change and foster a culture of fast and effective learning at all levels. Provides coaching to enable team members to lead virtual teams around technologies and customer/partner challenges by sharing ideas, insights, and strategic, technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger virtual team across Microsoft. Fosters collaboration across teams (e.g., account teams, product teams) and solution area communities. Drives recognition for Microsoft solutions through technical and business presentations and engagements with internal and external audiences.
• Accelerates innovation by coaching teams on building and/or modifying intellectual properties (IPs) rooted in domain experience and/or industry acumen. Coaches the team to connect gaps and patterns across business and technology areas, and drives changes and improvements to existing IP, technologies, and/or processes that enable solutions to scale across customers/partners, and drives opportunities for IP reuse and practice sharing. Manages contributions to the company stock of structured frameworks and methodologies. Drives strategy for new IP and collaborates with managed intellectual property (MIP), Design, and Governance to improve existing IP.

Other

• Embody our culture and values