Cloud Solution Architecture

Please join the Retail & Consumer Goods Organization as a Senior Cloud Solution Architect to gather customer/partner insights. Develops and expands existing impactful relationships with customer and partner architects and technical specialists, technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders. Guides other team members to focus on customer experience through partner learnings to ensure efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Actively listens and respectfully challenges customers/partners when going in the wrong direction, presents insights and alternatives, and takes action appropriately. Identifies and anticipates issues and advises customers/partners to operate and optimize performance in accordance with Microsoft best practices. Drives customer/partner relationships to anticipate, identify, escalate, and work to resolve technical blockers to accelerate consumption and solution implementations. Proactively uses knowledge of the offerings, practices, products, services, solutions, and value propositions of Microsoft and its competitors in customer/partner conversations to identify and/or guide and support partners in developing growth opportunities based on knowledge of customer/partner needs. Understands industry trends and the competitor's architecture solutions and identifies Microsoft's strengths over competitive solutions to drive conversations with customers/partners and convince them of solution. Proactively develops technical and professional learning and development plan in alignment with and support from their manager. Shares ideas, insights, and strategic technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger virtual team across Microsoft using a thorough knowledge of specific Microsoft products and their context in the competitive landscape. Generates new ideas for changes and improvements to existing intellectual property (IP), technologies, and processes for designated customers/partners.

**Responsibilities**:
Business Impact
- Identifies and anticipates issues and advises customers/partners to operate and optimize performance in accordance with Microsoft best practices. Adapts methodology and applies governance to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. Adheres to quality assurance standards and calculates risks while ensuring excellence in the design and/or delivery of solutions. Leverages standard tools to ensure accurate opportunity and milestone execution and pipeline hygiene.
- Understands industry trends and the competitor's architecture solutions and identifies Microsoft's strengths over competitive solutions to drive conversations with customers/partners and convince them of solution.

Customer Centricity
- Actively listens and respectfully challenges customers/partners when going in the wrong direction, presents insights and alternatives, and takes action appropriately.
- Develops and expands existing impactful relationships with customer and partner architects and technical specialists, technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders. Receives and synthesizes data about customer/partner business and technical requirements, addresses them with technical architecture(s), and demonstrates and proves those solutions' capability and value through design collaboration sessions with the customer/partner. Contributes to and understands how work aligns with customer success plan and meets customer/partner needs by partnering with the appropriate internal teams and resources to deliver customer outcomes. Supports customer/partner skilling and addressing identified capability gaps (e.g., skills, capacities) by delivering as a trusted technical advisor to ensure customer readiness by facilitating technical discussions and adoption of technical best practices (e.g., architecture, well-architectured principles, required technical skills and roles) and enabling operational health and cloud readiness. Assesses and transfers knowledge to close customer/partner capability skill gaps, taking action through peers as appropriate. May identify and recommend most qualified partners to meet customer project needs.
- Gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner by driving new feedback, insights, and resources across internal teams to add and prioritize. Represents the customer/partner to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) to shape products and services by providing insights across the territory. Advocates for the customer/partner at all opportunities and shares customer success stories with the wider internal team.
- Guides other team members to focus on customer experience through partner learnings to ensure efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless a