Senior Cloud Solution Architect - Digital & App Innovation

We are currently looking for a Senior Cloud Solution Architect - Digital & App Innovation professionals to join our teams across various business groups, for varying customer sizes, in our enterprise, regulated, and partner services organizations. By applying for this role, you will be considered for multiple opportunities within Microsoft across the United States, including locations beyond where the role is posted. This role is flexible in that you can work up to 50% from home. Travel percentages will vary according to role.

As a Senior Cloud Solution Architect – Digital & App Innovation, you will specialize in one of the following categories: Dev Advocate or Low Code, depending on your experience.

Azure is the most comprehensive, innovative, and flexible cloud platform today and Microsoft is hiring professionals that will drive customer cloud adoption within the most important companies in the market. We are always learning. Insatiably curious. We lean into uncertainty, take risks, and learn quickly from our mistakes. We build on each other’s ideas because we are better together. We stand in awe of what humans dare to achieve and are motivated every day to empower others to do more and achieve more through our technology and innovation. Together we make a difference.

In the Customer Success team, we are looking for people with a passion for delivering customer success. As a Cloud Solution Architect, you will enable customers to achieve their outcomes, based on their investments in Microsoft technology. Leveraging your technical subject-matter experience, you will lead technical conversations with customers to drive value from their MS investments, including identifying resolutions to issues blocking customer success projects. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth, honing your technical and collaboration skills, and deepening your cloud experience.

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.

Other Requirements:

• Microsoft is unable to sponsor a work visa for this role due to the nature of the role’s job duties.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior project experience:
  • Low Code: 
    • Enterprise-scale technical experience with Microsoft Power Platform, architecture capabilities, implementation requirements, integrations, and future roadmap.
    • Deep domain experience on application development best practices and DevOps, especially as it relates to no-code/low-code development.
    • Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365, Power Apps, SharePoint and Teams.
    • Experience in mapping business processes to Power Platform and Azure product capability and solution areas.
    • Understanding of application integration technologies is preferred.
      Knowledge of other Low code development platforms - Appian, Pega, Mendix, Google App maker, Salesforce lightning and OutSystems.

OR 

• • Dev Advocate:
    • Software design, development and deployment for Web application server technologies, Cloud applications, mobile (Android, iOS), Linux, Windows.
    • DevOps practices, including continuous planning/Agile, CI/CD, quality and security and one of the DevOps tool chains (i.e, Azure DevOps, GitHub).
    • Programming languages: C++, C#, Java, Node.js, JSON, PHP, Python.
    • Experience with scalable architectures using Azure App Service, API management, serverless technologies, container orchestration
      Experience using integrated development environments (e.g., Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Eclipse, XCode, WebSphere) targeting Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, public clouds (i.e. Azure, AWS, Google).
    • Understanding of Low code platform and technologies such as Power Apps.
• Experience working in a large, matrixed organization and collaborating with sales teams.
• 4+ years of experience driving architecture with either internal lines-of-business or external customers.
• 4+ years of experience building enterprise architectures and influencing business outcomes.
• Architecture design: Apply design thinking methodology to construct architectures that drive value for the customer, incorporating policies, governance, and customer systems into the overall framework.

Cloud Solution Architecture IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $83,400 - $167,800 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 $108,900 - $183,000 per year.

Cloud Solution Architecture IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $103,800 - $200,300 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 $133,700 - $219,200 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 and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

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 Centricity:

• 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. 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. 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 engagement 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:

• Learns new technologies or services as advised by leadership team. Aligns professional skill development with role success guidance and manager guidance. Role models effective technical readiness. Acts as a mentor and role model to junior 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 experience to develop new IP that fills identified gaps.

Other:

• Embody our culture and values