Senior Cloud Solution Architect

Overview

We are seeking a Senior Cloud Solution Architect to proactively champion the voice of the customer and partner, leveraging insights from feedback tools and systems. This role involves translating customer/partner problems into industry solutions, driving efficient delivery, and ensuring a seamless customer experience. You will identify, escalate, and mitigate blockers, delivering solutions aligned with company methodologies and proven practices. A key focus is identifying new opportunities for Consumption, Usage & Unified expansion at scale, while operating with operational excellence across all sales stages. You will contribute to leading virtual teams, utilizing knowledge of Microsoft architectures in a competitive landscape, and identifying gaps to scale solutions across customers.

This position offers a significant opportunity to enable customers to fully realize the potential of the cloud. As part of Microsoft’s Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization, with over 45,000 employees and partners globally, the mission is to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated experiences. CE&S drives cross-company alignment and execution, overseeing consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft’s solution portfolio, and is pivotal in accelerating AI transformation for customers worldwide.

The Microsoft Federal organization addresses the unique mission, legal, regulatory, and procurement requirements of the United States Government (USG). Microsoft Federal is dedicated to providing qualified, experienced, and certified personnel, including those with necessary security clearances, to meet evolving USG needs. Flexibility in recruiting, hiring, and workforce assignment is a mission-critical philosophy. Personnel can expect to serve in various roles across Civilian, Defense, or Intelligence Community segments. Microsoft is committed to empowering every person and organization to achieve more, fostering a culture of growth mindset, inspiring excellence, and encouraging daily best efforts to drive life-changing innovations.

Responsibilities

Business Impact

• Operate with operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages and activities.
• Collaborate across Microsoft and customer/partner teams to achieve objectives and increase satisfaction.
• Proactively manage business and technical risks, applying governance principles to minimize them.
• Execute work in compliance with industry and Microsoft guidelines and continuously prioritize demands to align with business goals.
• Deliver solutions in line with company methodologies (e.g., value-based deliverables, advice, training), preparing customers for operational readiness.
• Help customers deploy for long-term organizational adoption, increasing satisfaction and driving consumption/usage.
• Guide customers/partners toward well-architected (e.g., secure, resilient, AI-enabled), cost- and performance-optimized solutions.
• Provide feedback to the Unified Delivery Team to refine content.
• Proactively identify new opportunities for Consumption, Usage & Unified expansion, especially Enhanced Solutions, based on business value and Microsoft’s value proposition.
• Actively listen to and challenge customers/partners, building trust to advocate for alternative architectures/solutions.
• Identify and evaluate industry trends, gather customer insights, and map existing architecture to business outcomes.
• Capture opportunities in appropriate systems, collaborating across the organization to execute on Microsoft's Customer Engagement Model.
• Proactively identify, escalate, and mitigate blockers to accelerate solution deployment and value realization.
• Apply business, technical, industry, and/or enterprise knowledge to resolve identified constraints.

Customer Centricity

• Act as the voice of the customer/partner, sharing feedback, insights, and technical input with Engineering and Product Offerings teams.
• Identify patterns of feedback across customers/partners/territories/industries to develop strategic insights.
• Present business cases to program managers to influence product roadmaps and drive initiatives.
• Translate customer/partner problems into industry solutions aligned with Microsoft product and platform strategy, demonstrating ROI.
• Help customers/partners adopt and use Microsoft product/platform strategy-aligned (cross-solution area) solutions.
• Build relationships with technical decision makers (TDMs) and bridge understanding with business decision makers (BDMs).
• Independently interact with C-level roles (CIO, CISO, CXO) to bridge security, compliance, operational, and risk requirements.
• Guide team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery.
• Define customer/partner conditions of success and anticipate/address dissatisfaction to improve experience and accelerate transformation.

Partner Specialization

• Identify and prioritize opportunities aligning with revenue goals, orchestrating solution utilization growth with partners.
• Assist partner and sales teams in clarifying opportunities through proof of concept and technical pre-sales support.
• Understand solution area-specific market opportunities and collaborate with Global Partner Solutions (GPS) stakeholders to translate them into actions.
• Guide and support partners in developing repeatable offerings, practices, products, and solutions.
• Advise partners throughout initial strategic customer implementations.

Technical Leadership

• Leverage market insights to assist leadership in identifying areas for up-skilling and accreditations.
• Role model technical readiness (depth and breadth) and influence the team's readiness.
• Act as a mentor, leading readiness and upskilling activities by educating colleagues and sharing proven practices.
• Proactively identify gaps through delivery, communicate them, and connect patterns across business/technology areas to drive product, IP, and process improvements.
• Contribute to the development and modification of Microsoft's structured frameworks and methodologies.
• Provide thought leadership and innovation to customers/partners and internal communities.
• Contribute to leading virtual teams around technologies and customer challenges, sharing insights across Microsoft.
• Demonstrate strong industry knowledge and increase recognition for Microsoft solutions through presentations and engagements (e.g., Tech Connect, Build, Ignite).
• Contribute to intellectual property and identify patterns for scalable, repeatable models (e.g., CoPilot and AI scenarios).
• Participate in external technical and non-technical community events to elevate the Microsoft brand and share learnings.

If hired for this position, the team you would be joining is part of our Cloud organization which supports and works with government contracts that require a unique background check requirement. Please note you will be provided with steps for completing that process if you accept a role on the team. The ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. A Top Secret/SCI clearance is required.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 4+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, IT consulting/support, systems administration, network operations, software development/support, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting OR equivalent experience.

Other Requirements

Security Clearance Requirements: Candidates must be able to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:

• The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret/SCI Security Clearance.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.
• Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.
• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of U.S. citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local United States government agency customer and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport, or other approved documents, or verified US government Clearance.

Additional Or Preferred Qualifications

• 4+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
• 4+ years experience working on technical projects.
• Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications).

Key skills/competency

• Cloud Architecture Design
• AI/ML Transformation
• US Government Contracts
• Top Secret/SCI Clearance
• Customer Experience Management
• Solution Development & Delivery
• Technical Leadership & Mentoring
• Risk Management & Mitigation
• Partner Ecosystem Engagement
• Azure Cloud Platform Expertise