Digital Solution Engineer

Digital Solution Engineer at Microsoft

The Digital Solution Engineer identifies and engages with customer technical decision makers, while engaging the sales team and delivering/driving sales strategy. This role leverages customer context, portfolio expertise, and deep technical or industry knowledge to build credibility with customers, leading and ensuring complex technical wins. The Digital Solution Engineer leverages knowledge of resources and engages product and support teams to remediate escalated technical blockers. They scale wins through partners in a sell-with environment by promoting partners within the Microsoft ecosystem. Acting as a subject matter expert on particular competition, they develop strategic cross-workload/subsidiary and account-level responses to specific market threats. This role represents the customer by acting as a role model for leveraging various internal resources, works with local marketing teams to provide feedback on corporate domain messages, monitors, analyzes, and provides input on proactive action plans. They apply, customize, and guide colleagues to use existing demonstration assets, adapting and extending architecture patterns to accommodate complex customer requirements. The Digital Solution Engineer applies and adapts sales methodologies to guide customers through digital transformation as an advisor and innovator. They build readiness plans for peers and proactively identify gaps and new opportunities for learning, overseeing group training and one-to-many events with subject matter expertise across Microsoft solution areas/products, and acting as a thought leader on internal and external tech community posts.

Responsibilities

Build Strategy

• Proactively develops strategic cross-workload/subsidiary and account-level responses to specific market threats by identifying market patterns and delivering feedback to business groups on industry trends and needs.
• Builds customer compete knowledge, documents compete patterns across solution areas, and shares within the community to drive change and escalations for competitive selling strategies, acting as a subject matter expert on specific competition.
• Delivers customer compete knowledge back to product and engineering teams and works with local account teams to tailor and drive customer win strategy for local markets.
• Monitors, analyzes, and provides input on proactive action plans to promote customer usage of key/prioritized Microsoft solutions/products that support customer’s business outcomes.
• Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC) by acting as a role model for leveraging various internal resources (e.g., UAT, technical feedback platform) and mentoring peers on best practices.

Scale Customer Engagements

• Identifies and engages with key customer technical and business decision makers, anticipating customer needs and issues, and collaborates with the sales team to deliver and drive sales strategy.
• Ensures consistency and quality of engagements through adherence of standards and best practices (e.g., MSP, MCP), providing feedback as needed, and models common sales and delivery methodology.
• Helps identify team resources needed through customer scope validation and maximizes the impact of customer engagements by executing on solutions to blockers.
• Leverages knowledge of programs and investments (e.g., MTC, exec briefing center, partner workshops) and proactively engages engineering, product, and support teams to remediate escalated technical blockers.
• Uses knowledge of customer context and broad technical, domain, cross-solution, and market/industry knowledge to build credibility with customers.
• Leads and ensures a broad range of customer needs are met by showcasing suitable Microsoft solutions anchored in insights and business value, influencing customer technical buy-in.
• Establishes rules of engagement for extended teams and leverages deep knowledge of processes (e.g., MSP, co-sell partners), tools, and programs (e.g., FastTrack).
• Ensures and drives alignment of Microsoft technologies with future sector standards and requirements by working with industry boards and driving customer case studies and references.

Scale Through Partners

• Scales wins through partners in a sell-with environment by promoting the partner within the Microsoft ecosystem and drives the orchestration model for partner engagement at scale.
• Proactively collaborates with pre-sale teams and partners, self-identifies and selects top 5 to 10 go-to partners for proactive and early engagement in opportunities.
• Reviews partner engagement and provides feedback to partners, working with the Tech Leadership of partners on joint goals of partnership.

Solution Design and Proof

• Adapts and extends architecture patterns across technologies/solution areas to accommodate complex customer and/or business requirements and drive integration solutions for industry flavor.
• Delivers assets that can be leveraged by others in the business.
• Applies, customizes, and guides colleagues to use existing demonstration assets.
• Demonstrates and oversees demonstrations (e.g., pre-built demos, ADS, POC sessions with partners, pilots, hackathons) of solutions and positions solutions against competitors.
• Leverages partner/customer teams as needed to prove capabilities and programmatic framework for re-use by the business. Leads the review of partner demonstrations and supports partners to ensure alignment with Microsoft standards.

Technical Leadership

• Leads and oversees group training or one-to-many events (e.g., workshops, Webinars) to present and educate customers, partners, and colleagues with subject matter expertise across Microsoft solution areas/products.
• Identifies connections across platforms/workloads to promote collaborative learning and builds readiness plans for peers or area level, proactively identifying gaps and new opportunities for learning.
• Monitors, responds to, and acts as a thought leader on internal and external tech community posts, establishes and leads vibrant tech communities, and acts as a mentor to the community.
• Contributes and participates in Customer Executive Briefing Center sessions. Shares best practices internally on community calls and drives recognition of Microsoft cloud solutions through presentations and engagements with external audiences.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field AND significant technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR equivalent experience.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field AND deep, senior-level technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR equivalent experience.
• Extensive experience with cloud and hybrid, or on‑premises infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, industry standards, and/or technology management.
• Certification in relevant (Microsoft or industry) technologies or disciplines (e.g., Microsoft Office 365; Power BI; Azure Administrator, Architecture, and Development exams; Cloud Platform Technologies; Information Security; Architecture).

Key skills/competency

• Cloud Solutions
• Digital Transformation
• Technical Sales
• Solution Architecture
• Customer Engagement
• Partner Ecosystem
• Market Analysis
• Competitive Strategy
• Technical Leadership
• Microsoft Azure