Senior Azure ACE Engineer

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. 

Every minute of every day, customers stake their entire business and reputation on Microsoft Cloud. The Azure Customer Experience (CXP) team believes that when we meet our high standards for quality and reliability, our customers win. If we falter, our customers fail their end-customers. Our vision is to turn Microsoft Cloud customers into fans. 

We are the ACES Strategic team (Advanced Cloud Engineering & Supportability), a global engineering team in Azure CXP and we are focused on Strategic Azure Customers. We are customer-obsessed problem-solvers. We orchestrate and drive deep engagements in areas like Incident Management, Problem Management, Support, Resiliency, and empowering the customers. We represent the customer and amplify customer voice with Azure Engineering connecting to the quality vision for Azure. We innovate and find ways to scale our learning across our customer base. Diversity and inclusion are central to who we are, how we work, and what we enable our customers to achieve. We know that empowering our customers starts with empowering our team to show up authentically, work in ways that are best for them, and achieve their career goals. 

Are you constantly customer-obsessed and passionate about solving complex technical problems? Do you take pride in enhancing customer experience through innovation? If the answer is Yes, then join us and surround yourself with people who are passionate about cloud computing and believe that extraordinary support is critical to customer success. 

 As a customer focused Advanced Cloud Engineer, you are the primary engineering contact accountable for your customer’s support experience on Azure. You will drive resolution of critical and complex problems, support key customer projects on Azure, and be the voice of the customer within Azure. In this role, you will work in partnership with Customer Success Account Managers, Cloud Solution Architects, Technical Support Engineers, and Azure engineering with our mission to turn Azure customers into fans with world-class engineering-led support experience. 

• Experience: 6+ years of demonstrated IT experience supporting and troubleshooting enterprise level, mission-critical applications resolving highly complex issues/situations and driving technical resolution across cross-functional organizations. At least 2+ yrs. of cloud experience.
• Excellent Communication: Must have the ability to empathize with customers and convey confidence. Able to explain highly technical issues to varied audiences. Able to prioritize and advocate customer’s needs to the proper channels. Take ownership and work towards a resolution.
• Customer Obsession: Passion for customers and focus on delivering the right customer experience.
• Growth Mindset: Openness and ability to learn new skills and technologies in a fast-paced environment.
• Technical Skills: Some understanding of cloud computing technologies. Optionally, demonstrated hands on experience in one or more of the following:
  • Core IaaS: Compute, Storage, Networking, High Availability
  • Data Platform and Bigdata: SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, HDInsight/Hadoop, Machine Learning, Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Data Factory / Data Bricks
  • Azure PaaS Services: Redis Cache, Service Bus, Event Hub, Cloud Service, IoT suite, Mobile Apps, etc.
  • Identity and Authentication: SSO/Federation, AD/Azure AD, ADFS, etc.
  • Preferred but not required: Cosmos DB, Azure Kubernetes Service
  • Experience in one or more automation languages (PowerShell, Python, C#, Open Source)
  • #AZCXP #AZCXPACE #ACES500 #AZCXPSUPPORT, #AzureCXP

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and / or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire / transfer and every two years thereafter.

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.

Technical Oriented –

• Utilizes engineering tools, customer telemetry and direct input. Flags the patterns of defects/signals in the products or issues across customers. Inform customers and partners about the complex thematic active issues, progress made on them, and discuss next steps.
• Synthesizes feedback from customers and partners to learn about the product usage and identify and resolve feature and knowledge gaps and key performance indicators (KPIs) in the current product. Leads team in sharing insights and best practices with customers and partners on these service improvements. Recommends changes to content improvement or troubleshooting guides and develops metrics to evaluate the changes

Customer Solution Lifecycle Management –

• Utilizes cross systems to conduct health checks to ensure customer environment (e.g., product, service, feature) is optimized and configured for deployment. Provides guidance to customers on understanding and implementing new versions. Serves as a connecting point between the engineering team and customers throughout the solution’s lifecycle. Utilizes any resources to respond and resolve the immediate issues throughout the solution lifecycle. Proactively provides guidance to customers on designing configurations and deploying solutions on Microsoft platforms.
• Handles complex escalations on customer issues from the support or field teams. Conducts impact analysis to determine the priority of the escalations. Conducts deep root cause analysis of the issues and converts them into improvement opportunities. Serves as an escalation resource in areas of subject matter expertise. Represents the team on highly complex issues and answers a large variety of technical questions and concerns.

 Relationship/Experience Management –

• Acts as a voice of customers and leverages customers'' feedback to provide input on business plans developed by the relevant product and business groups. Identifies customer usage patterns and driving resolutions on reoccurring customer issues with engineering and product and business groups. Leads their team in engaging with feature and product groups on redesign/customer requested changes for Microsoft products. Closes the loop of feedback with the customers on product features.
• Partners with other teams (e.g., program managers, software engineers, product, customer service support [CSS] teams) to prioritize and drive resolutions of complex, high-impact customer issues and integration of customer features into the products. Leads discussions with stakeholders on customer progression and provides expertise on resolutions plans for common types of customer issues. Proactively communicates the translation of signals into actionable insights/trends to product teams to improve service reliability. Leads coordination with stakeholders (e.g., engineering/product teams) to develop mechanisms that improve customer health engagement and reduce the turnover time.

Other duties as assigned.