Cloud Solution Architecture

With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft's products and services, ignited by our people and culture. We drive cross-company alignment and execution, ensuring that we consistently exceed customers' expectations in every interaction, whether in-product, digital, or human-centered. CE&S is responsible for all up services across the company, including consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft's portfolio of solutions and products. Join CE&S and help us accelerate AI transformation for our customers and the world.

The Global Customer Success (GCS) organization, an organization within CE&S, is leading the effort to enable customer success on the Microsoft Cloud by harnessing leading, AI-powered capabilities and human expertise to deliver innovation solutions that accelerate business value, drive operational excellence and nurture long term loyalty.

Are you looking for a role where you can interact directly with large enterprise customers to improve their Azure Data and SQL related technologies? If so, we are looking for you

We are seeking a Cloud Solution Architect in the CSA Global Delivery organization with deep expertise in Azure Data and SQL. As a key technical resource for the customer, you will be primarily focused on delivering proactive services such as education workshops, delivering assessments, and providing tailored guidance. Troubleshooting skills are essential as this role will include working with Microsoft Support to expedite incident resolution.

The CSA Global Delivery team is a centralized group consisting of both full-time employees (FTEs) and Vendor CSAs dedicated to enhancing the customer's experience with Microsoft as they transition to hybrid/public cloud solutions.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

This role is flexible in that you can work up to 50% from home.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

You will be planning and delivering proactive and reactive support including onsite presence as needed
· You will Identify and manage customer goals and SfMC opportunities to improve the quality, consumption, and health of the customer's solution.
· You will drive and participate in proactive delivery management: spot performance issues, analyze problems, and drive activities focused on stabilizing and optimizing your customer's solution.
· You will work with internal Microsoft support teams, account teams, product engineering and service engineering teams and other stakeholders to ensure a streamlined and efficient customer support experience.
· You will apply and share lessons learned for continuous process and delivery improvement for the customer and peers.
· You will engage in meetings with your customers and account teams to review Support for Mission Critical services, customer support issues, and articulate your Customer Success Plans.
· You will share and gain knowledge through technical communities.

Technical Leadership

· Demonstrate the capability to act as CSA Pod Lead with ability to drive planning and delivery of Pod team by engaging CSAM and ATU, manage customer relationship by conducting monthly engagement reviews and assuring quality and be accountable for capacity planning, hiring, skilling and utilization of Pod members.

· Proactively develops technical and professional learning and development plan in alignment with and support from their manager. Role models effective technical readiness. Acts as a mentor and role model to less experienced colleagues to educate them on technical and non-technical concepts. Participates in development opportunities (e.g., Ready, Build, Ignite).

· 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. Participates in external technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, Webcasts, blogs, hackathons) and shares learnings with the internal team.

· Generates new ideas for changes and improvements to existing intellectual property (IP), technologies, and processes for designated customers/partners. Drives opportunities for IP reuse, best practice sharing, and consumption acceleration. Proactively identifies gaps through delivery and communicating those gaps to others (e.g., Leadership, managed intellectual property [MIP], Design, and Governance). Applies subject matter expertise to develop new IP that fills identified gaps

Important key criteria:

• Should have potential to scale as CSA Pod Lead with ability to lead planning and delivery of vendor Pod team by engaging account team

• Manage customer relationship by conducting monthly engagement reviews and assuring quality and be accountable for capacity planning, hiring, skilling and utilization of Pod members.

Additional details

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

• 10+ years of Data & AI related experience with at least three of the following technologies: SQL Server 2012 or later on-premises, SQL Server 2012 or later running on Azure VMs, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL Hyper-Scale, SQL AAG Clusters, Azure Integration Services

• Strong knowledge of SQL Server Internals

• Practical experience designing / building large OLTP DB systems

• Knowledge of other SQL technologies on Azure (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB)

• Data & AI Certifications in Microsoft and competing Cloud Technologies.

• Outstanding customer service skills with excellent oral and written communication skills as well as experience providing training to peers or customers.

• Strong interpersonal and leadership skills while working with diverse audiences including highly technical IT professionals, engineers, developers, and architects as well as executives and management professionals in both customer and Microsoft teams.

• Experience leading and driving projects as well as motivating others.

• Self-motivated, resourceful, and able to handle multiple responsibilities as a Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect

• Ability to develop strong strategic customer relationships that gain the trust and respect of customers.

• Ability to handle critical technical issues and work in difficult support situations.

• Ability to handle difficult or sensitive situations with customers.

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.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

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