FDE Solutions Architect

Job Description

Overview

With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. We drive cross-company alignment and execution, ensuring that we consistently exceed customers’ expectations in every interaction, whether in-product, digital, or human-centered. CE&S is responsible for all up services across the company, including consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft’s portfolio of solutions and products. Join CE&S and help us accelerate AI transformation for our customers and the world.

The CE&S Strategy and Operations (S&O) organization is seeking an experienced Business Administrator to provide support to the executive leadership team and the CVP. The CE&S S&O team works across stakeholders on critical initiatives to drive the mission and strategy of the organization forward.

The FDE Solutions Architect is a customer facing technical role responsible for accelerating customer value by helping reduce time to agreed scope, enabling timely MVP delivery, and contributing to repeatable delivery patterns across Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) engagements.

Operating within the Forward Deployed Engineer model, this role partners closely with account teams, delivery leads, and customers to translate business challenges into clearly scoped, technically sound solutions. The FDE Solutions Architect shapes engagements early, provides technical direction throughout delivery, and helps remove obstacles that impact execution.

The FDE Solutions Architect operates with growing autonomy, demonstrates strong technical ownership within engagements, and contributes meaningfully to delivery quality and consistency across FDE teams.

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.

Responsibilities

Business Impact & Success Metrics

The FDE Solutions Architect contributes to improvements in the following business metrics:

• Time to Agreed Scope – supporting timely and effective scoping of FDE engagements

• Time to Contract / Start – reducing technical friction between sales and delivery

• Time to First MVP – enabling delivery teams to achieve initial customer value quickly

• Customer Reported Delivery Quality Score – reflecting solution clarity, technical readiness, and delivery setup quality

Technical Scoping & Solution Shaping:
• Support technical scoping activities across FDE engagements, helping translate business aspirations into clearly defined use cases and architectures.
• Partner with Account Teams, FDE Delivery Leads, and customers to define and validate solution scope, technical approach, and delivery assumptions.
• Ensure scoped solutions are practical, scalable, and aligned to MVP driven delivery principles.
• Help identify appropriate technical resources and skills required for successful delivery.

Delivery Enablement & MVP Support:
• Support delivery velocity by helping clarify scope, dependencies, and technical risks prior to and during delivery.
• Assist in resolving technical issues that impact delivery progress, escalating when appropriate.
• Contribute to the definition of measurable MVP outcomes and success criteria.

Pattern Contribution & Knowledge Sharing:
• Contribute to the identification of recurring customer requests and delivery patterns across engagements.
• Share lessons learned and emerging best practices with peer FDE teams.
• Participate in the development and adoption of standardized delivery approaches and templates.

Operational Collaboration:
• Participate in operational reviews of active FDE engagements, providing technical input on delivery risks, scope alignment, and MVP progress.
• Support identification of high quality FDE outcomes that may serve as customer references or internal success stories.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, Information Security, Information Security, or related field
• Proven experience in technical solution architecture, delivery engineering, or customer facing technical roles
• Solid background in systems design, cloud platforms, data platforms, or enterprise software solutions
• Experience working directly with customers to understand requirements and shape technical solutions
• Ability to translate ambiguous business problems into structured technical approaches and MVP concepts
• Experience working in fast paced delivery environments with changing requirements
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across sales, delivery, and operations teams

• Experience working within or alongside a Forward Deployed Engineer model
• Familiarity with agile and iterative delivery practices focused on MVPs
• Experience contributing to reusable delivery patterns or best practices
• Exposure to cross functional collaboration across commercial and delivery teams

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. 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 with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.