Director - Cloud Solution Architect (Azure)

Job Description

Leading an organization of Cloud Solution Architects to deliver value at customers with Azure Infrastructure technologies. As the Director Azure Infrastructure in the Customer Success Unit this requires:

Guiding the team in identifying and evaluating trends and gathering customer/partner insights to map architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes.

Guiding the team in developing and expanding existing impactful relationships with customer and partner architects, C-level technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders.

Coaching team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery.

Driving 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.

Providing 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.

Accelerating innovation by coaching teams on building and/or modifying intellectual properties (IPs) rooted in domain expertise and/or industry acumen.

Modeling how to engage constructively and transparently with the technical and/or business community locally and globally.

In addition, this role has people management responsibilities including driving employee growth and development, executing projects, and managing performance.

Responsibilities

Business Impact

• Provides a comprehensive view of customer/partner challenges, industry trends, and competitor architectures, enabling team members to illustrate Microsoft's value and devise counter strategies.
• Manages business metrics, ensuring teams meet targets and deliver on Microsoft's Customer Promise. Holds teams accountable for leveraging Microsoft's and competitors' products and services in customer/partner interactions and developing scalable solutions. Coaches’ teams to optimize solutions, drive cloud consumption, and lead impactful conversations with customers/partners.
• Ensures adherence to Microsoft standards and best practices, setting expectations for methodology and governance. Monitors technical work and ensures robust architectures. Uses standard tools for opportunity management and pipeline hygiene.
• Guides teams in applying business and technical skills to resolve technical blockers, accelerating solution implementation and customer outcomes. Identifies patterns in blockers and coaches on best practices for handling escalations.

Customer Centricity

• Coaches team members to prioritize customer experience and deliver seamless, connected support. Encourages defining customer success criteria and anticipates dissatisfaction to improve value and accelerate transformation. Shares best practices for transformative delivery and oversees strategies to enhance customer experience.
• Guides team in building impactful relationships with technical and business stakeholders, bridging gaps, and facilitating effective customer conversations. Provides real-time coaching and ensures alignment with customer success plans. Collaborates with peers for account and resource planning and supports customer skilling and thought leadership. Builds impactful and long-lasting relationships on C-level.
• Cultivates constructive tension and trust with customers and partners, challenging decisions to explore better solutions. Supports team in identifying trends and gathering insights to map solutions to customer outcomes. Represents customer feedback to influence product development and shares success stories internally.
• Leads virtual teams to help customers achieve resilient multi-region architectures and flexibility in resource utilization.

Technical Leadership

• Models constructive and transparent engagement with local and global technical/business communities. Participates in management communities to foster a culture of swift, effective learning. Coaches’ teams on leading virtual groups, sharing insights, and strategic input. Promotes collaboration across account, product, and solution area teams, enhancing Microsoft's recognition through technical and business presentations.
• Encourages a continuous learning culture by empowering team members to share insights and addressing challenges and trends. Uses market insights to help define vision and technical strategy. 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. Acts as a mentor and drives technical readiness and adaptation to changing priorities. Partners with learning leads to remove learning blockers.
• Drives innovation by coaching teams to develop and modify IPs based on domain expertise and industry knowledge. Connects gaps across business and technology areas, improving existing IP and processes for scalability and sharing best practices. Manages contributions to structured frameworks and methodologies and collaborates on new IP strategies.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Several years people management experience, including managing consultant practice managers, technical sales managers, and/or technical architect managers.

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND Several 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.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.