Cloud Solution Architects (CSAs) play a critical role in working with partners to provide deep technical support through solution build and first mile customer engagements such as Proof of Concepts, Architectural Design Sessions (ADS), and Hackathons. The CSAs build relationships with partner technical and development resources, designing and architecting new solutions based on Microsoft’s cloud platform and technologies. They deliver value via a portfolio of service delivery engagements optimized to accelerate partner solution builds and first mile customer wins and stand out as a Technology expert due to deep solutions knowledge. They can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft engineering teams and blackbelts often surfacing product issues, providing feedback and insights that accelerate fixes and updates.

Responsibilities

Key areas of responsibility - WHAT CSAs do:

• Understanding Partner Technical Environment. Identifies and evaluates industry trends, and jointly develops technical enablement plan with partner. Maintains technical skills and knowledge of market trends, opportunities, and competitive insights.

• Architecture Design & Deployment. Champions an existing architecture approach, synthesizes data about partner business, applies broad technical, industry, and enterprise knowledge, anticipates technical blockers and adapts methodology to minimize risks.

• Practice Development. Connects gaps and patterns across business and technology areas, and drives changes and improvements to existing intellectual property, technologies, and/or processes that enable solutions.  

• Trusted Advisor: Develops and expands existing impactful relationships; creates and sustains constructive tension and trust with partner and leads the adoption of Microsoft architecture technologies.  

• Thought Leadership. Leads virtual teams around technologies and partner challenges, participates in external architect community events and shares learnings with internal team; demonstrates deep industry knowledge and drives recognition for Microsoft solutions.  

• Solutions/Offers/Practices. Leads execution of architectural engagements, such as Technical Briefings, Proof of Concepts, Architectural Design Sessions, and Hackathons with the goal of defining and bringing new solutions, offers and/or practices to market.

• Skilling and Best Practice Sharing. Collaborates with Microsoft’s Engineering and Global Black Belt teams on specific skill requirements for partners and the sharing of best practices; Lead and/or contribute to the delivery of workshops, bootcamps, and trainings necessary to build the technical skills and expertise of partners.

• Technical Events & Community Contribution. Attends Digital Transformation/Technology conferences such as Build. Participate in technical panels and user groups, provide insights, and contributes work that is shared across communities.  

Qualifications

Key Capabilities

• 6-10+ years of success in consultative/complex technical sales, technology solutions/practice development, architecture, design, implementation, and/or support of highly distributed applications

• Understanding Partner Technical Environment. Adept at gathering partner insights and mapping architecture and digital transformation solutions to partner business outcomes. Deep understanding of digital transformation business drivers, cloud platforms, emerging computing trends and their impact on partner practice building opportunities.

• Architecture Design & Deployment. Skilled at proposing and developing high-value solutions to scale across multiple partners while demonstrating the business case and presenting alternative scenarios in collaboration with the partner, meeting business and IT requirements and constraints. Experience in enabling a breadth of highly advanced solutions using enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations and technology management that support the partner throughout pre-sales and/or implementation, resolving blockers and accelerating consumption while minimizing business and technical risks.

• Practice Development. Skilled in driving sales and consumption, developing and contributing to the company stock of structured frameworks and methodologies. Experience and understanding of large-scale application portfolios in enterprise-wide environments (including migration of on-premise workloads to the cloud).

• Trusted Advisor. Skillfully provides direction to technical decision-makers (TDMs) and builds the bridge between TDMs and business decision-makers (BDMs). Knows when to challenge partner decision and/or areas where they might do more and encourages alternative architectures and approaches.

• Thought Leadership. Ability to share strong insights, and strategic, technical input with technical teams and internal communities; Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solution/projects; ability to solve Partner problems through cloud technologies, leveraging internal and/or external resources.

• 3-5+ years’ experience in one of the deep technical specializations below.  

Dynamics 365 Application

• Functional experience on fit-gap analysis and solution design involving one or multiple Dynamics 365 Applications Portfolio like Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance, Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Commerce, Customer Insights.

• Technical design and implementation of one of multiple applications listed in the previous item, including implementation lifecycle, integration and extensibility patterns.

Power Platform.

• Technical experience on solution architecture and technical design for Power Apps, Power Automate, Data Verse Integration.

• Additional experience on solution design using Portals, Power BI, Power Virtual Agent is a plus

• Relationship Building. Proven track record of building deep sales relationships with CXOs and practice building executives in highly strategic ISV (Independent Software Vendor), MSP (Managed Service Provider), and SI (System Integrator) partner types.

• Collaboration. Acknowledged for driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication skills.

• Communication. Ability to orchestrate, lead, and influence virtual teams. Strong presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences at different levels of organizations.   

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field preferred

• Certification as Microsoft Certified Functional Consultant Associate, or Microsoft Certified Power Platform Solution Architect Expert

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. 

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.