Strategic Account Technology Strategist

Overview

The Strategic Account Technology Strategist provides technology guidance to clients and orchestrates interactions between clients and Microsoft resources. This role drives new opportunities, demand generation, Microsoft’s market share, and digital transformation by mapping industry and business scenarios to Microsoft solutions. Acting as a Technology Mentor, you will establish long-term relationships with technical and business decision-makers at the Chief X Officer (CxO) level, leading customer partnerships to present the strategic value of Microsoft solutions. This position requires acting as a trusted technology advisor, both internally and externally, to integrate Microsoft technology into customer businesses. You will gather client business insights, leverage existing architecture approaches, and identify pathways and resources for strategy building. Accountability includes orchestrating global teams, collaborating on performance markers, identifying risks, and partnering with customers to provide innovative solutions and integrate Microsoft technology. A strong knowledge of Microsoft's product landscape, solutions, and strategy is essential to address customer needs, acting as the voice of the customer internally. You will analyze customer needs for complex accounts, advise on gaps, and lead business transformations through digital initiatives. Furthermore, you will articulate how complex Microsoft technology meets future business needs better than competitors, contribute to stakeholder mapping, and establish best practices for aligning with quota attainment, consumption goals, and enablement plans for high-stakes customers.

Customer and Industry Insights

In this role, you will synthesize various business and industry insights from your team, global best practices, and case studies to forecast and develop recommendations for managing accounts and subsidiary planning. You will ensure that all levels of the organization provide diverse perspectives, enabling customers to adapt strategies, plans, business models, and solutions. Orchestrating global teams, you will gather information, collaborate on performance markers, and identify potential risks in customer accounts, bringing business and industry insights to address broader customer challenges. You will apply deep expertise to identify appropriate Industry Sales Kits and partners within the customer's vertical, understanding industry-related market trends, threats, opportunities, and barriers to growth, to support customers in solving issues and integrating Microsoft technology.

Differentiated Value Proposition

You will act as the customer's Technology Mentor, building established relationships with senior leaders, including technical and business decision-makers at the CxO-level, and extend these relationships beyond core customers to advise on solutions and align Microsoft capabilities. Leading customer business transformations through digital technologies for assigned accounts, you will drive business outcomes and create value by understanding industry positions, challenging customer thinking with innovative ideas that highlight the necessity for change and new strategic direction, and proactively engaging corporate and cross-industry resources. Ensuring line-of-business wins are captured as references, you will partner with line-of-business leaders or senior executives in large-scale customer organizations to articulate how complex Microsoft technology will meet future business needs better than the competition, leveraging the full scope of Microsoft's digital technologies.

Education and Thought Leadership

Leveraging existing and new readiness resources, you will demonstrate expertise in creating enablement plans for large and high-stakes customers and Microsoft's overall business. You will drive innovations to help customers meet capacity and capability goals, maximize reach and impact, and foster long-term engagement and thought leadership on the Microsoft platform, influencing large customers to adopt strategic value. This includes driving customer skilling initiatives and execution alongside account executive and enterprise skilling initiative teams. Furthermore, you will lead customer technology engagement by motivating and inspiring technical resources of customer, partner, and Microsoft towards business transformation, delivering regular industry and technology engagements or briefings to CxOs and their teams to drive execution and competitive advantage.

Mapping and Account Planning

As a Strategic Account Technology Strategist, you will orchestrate internal teams and the partner ecosystem (including global systems integrators, consultancy partners, and Microsoft Industry Solutions) to ensure sufficient technical resources for demand generation. You will contribute to global resource availability, allocate appropriate resources for projects, and proactively bridge technology resources with the customer. Establishing best practices and standards for account planning and review, you will align with quota attainment, consumption goals, and customer consumption gaps to inform quarterly and fiscal objectives, sharing output with the customer and realigning expectations. This role involves coordinating highly complex extended account teams across technologies, geographies, and functions, driving forecasting and tracking, and owning the technical portion of the account plan. You will provide Account thought leadership in IT, industry, and business strategy, sharing best practices, coaching subsidiary resources, and leveraging this leadership in partnership with account executives to set strategy and lead extended teams. Additionally, you will help customer technical specialists effectively present Microsoft offerings and contribute to creating stakeholder maps, determining coverage plans, and building execution frameworks across the customer's organization.

Technology Sales: Demand Generation and Orchestration

You will lead customers into the era of AI and Industrial Metaverse by creating targeted approaches tailored to their business requirements, positioning Microsoft as a future leader for accelerating productivity and creating new capabilities. Leveraging expertise in the current technology landscape, AI, and Industrial Metaverse capabilities, you will plot foundational elements on the technology roadmap to realize value for the customer. This involves building a mid-term strategy for AI and metaverse projects, developing an immediate opportunity pipeline, and orchestrating its execution through specialist and partner technical teams. You will lead Account Strategy Envisioning with the extended account team, customer, and partner, creating new Stage 1 opportunities (billed and consumed) with Technical Decision Maker (TDM) stakeholders, managing consumption pipelines, and unblocking issues. Coaching peers on opportunity initiation and mapping Microsoft priorities, you will define technology blueprints and set standards. The role also requires creating, developing, and driving opportunities based on industry best practices, presenting them to customers to generate demand, and leveraging multiple channels like social media. You will lead technical teams, including Specialist Team Unit (STU) and Customer Success Unit (CSU), and engage key stakeholders with customer-driven pitches to generate new demands.

Technology Strategy Formulation

This position leads the analysis of overall customer situations for large and complex accounts, advising on gaps that would benefit from Microsoft solutions by understanding business strategies and outcomes that technology can support. You will lead the adoption of technologies by plotting the strategic, long-term vision of the customer's/partner's business strategy and driving action. Acting as a strategic link, you will identify pathways for strategic efforts and resources for strategy building. You will contribute to creating trusted, long-term (e.g., three years plus) multi-horizon technological and business roadmaps for prominent accounts based on a deep understanding of business, technology priorities, and the customer's industry landscape. Validating strategies with stakeholders, driving envisioning, and articulating business and program changes are key. You will also contribute to translating customer business objectives, in conjunction with Industry Sales Kits and Solution Plays (which include consumption-heavy workloads and cloud services), to develop an effective Industry Technology Architecture for driving consumption and adoption of Microsoft cloud services.

Trusted Advisor

You will maintain and leverage a broad knowledge of Microsoft's product landscape, solutions, and strategy to address customer needs, proactively coordinating with an internal and external network of industry experts to build strong knowledge of the competitive landscape. Leveraging deep understanding of customers, you will share knowledge with virtual teams and promote customer business perspectives. Acting as the voice of the customer and internal advocate, you will provide insights, feedback, and challenges to internal teams (e.g., product groups, engineers) across all organizational levels, driving action and escalating pressing issues to facilitate appropriate solutions. This includes providing Account thought leadership in IT, business strategy, and technology landscape, sharing best practices, coaching subsidiary resources, and partnering with account executives to set strategy and lead extended teams. You will provide technical guidance to internal teams, create connections with Product and Engineering teams, and establish security thought leadership with customer executives (TDMs/BDMs) using Microsoft Security and Zero Trust narratives. Engaging stakeholders to position security as a business enabler, you will build opportunities to improve security posture and orchestrate execution through security specialists.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualificationsBachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business or related field AND 7+ years technical consulting, technical consultative selling, practice building, or related technical/sales/industry experience OR equivalent experience.

Other RequirementsMicrosoft is unable to sponsor a work visa for this role due to the nature of the role's job duties.Cloud Screening: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred QualificationsBachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business or related field AND 14+ years technical consulting, technical consultative selling, practice building, or related technical/sales/industry experience OR equivalent experience.5+ years experience in digital transformation or using technology to drive customer business outcomes.4+ years experience in business consulting, consultative selling, or change management.5+ years experience leading technical, support, and/or partner teams.5+ Customer facing experience.

Strategic Account Technology IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $130,900 - $251,900 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $165,600 - $272,300 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

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.

Key skills/competency

• Strategic Technology Planning
• CxO Relationship Management
• Digital Transformation Leadership
• Cloud Solutions Architecture
• AI & Industrial Metaverse
• Consultative Selling
• Account Strategy Development
• Demand Generation
• Global Team Orchestration
• Industry-Specific Insights