Cloud Solution Architecture

Support for Mission Critical (SfMC) is a specialized Microsoft team that delivers dedicated support to top-tier customers running mission-critical applications. Our customers include enterprises building banking backbones, stock exchanges, and large government systems – organizations that demand the highest levels of reliability, security, and performance. We are looking for a Security Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) to join our SfMC team in India. In this role, you will work across multiple Microsoft technologies and products under one roof, providing an excellent support experience to these elite customers. SfMC Cloud Solution Architects typically bring deep expertise in one or two areas, and have the opportunity to broaden their skill set and technical leadership across various technologies (rather than being confined to a single product). You will engage directly with high-profile customers and their senior stakeholders – often under executive visibility – to ensure their critical solutions are secure, resilient, and operating optimally. This is a customer-facing role that requires both broad and deep technical knowledge, exceptional problem-solving abilities, and outstanding communication skills.

• Provide Expert Guidance: Conduct architectural reviews and provide technical guidance to SfMC customers, with a focus on reliability, security, and performance of their mission-critical workloads.
• Own Customer Outcomes: Take end-to-end ownership of technical deliverables for your customers. Ensure solutions align with customer business outcomes and Microsoft's best practices, maintaining a customer-obsessed approach from design through operational health.
• Risk & Design Assessment: Proactively identify architectural risks, design gaps, and operational inefficiencies across customers' services. Recommend and drive improvements to strengthen resiliency and security in their architecture.
• Proactive Engagements: Engage with SfMC stakeholders and customer teams to drive architectural validation, incident prevention, and workload health improvements. Lead deep technical assessments and reviews that anticipate potential issues before they impact the customer.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Collaborate closely with Microsoft engineering teams and support organizations to resolve escalated issues. Share field insights and customer feedback to influence product improvements, and ensure proposed solutions align with the latest platform capabilities and roadmap.
• IP Creation & Reuse: Develop reusable intellectual property (IP) – such as scripts, tools, automation, and technical documentation – that can be leveraged for scalable engagements across multiple customers. Champion the sharing of best practices and solutions within the team and broader organization.
• Trusted Advisor: Build trusted advisor relationships with customer architects and engineers. Influence their long-term technical strategy by providing thought leadership on stability, resilience, and innovation in their use of Microsoft technologies. Guide customers in adopting a "secure by design" approach and modern best practices for mission-critical systems.

Business Impact:

• Operational Excellence: Identify and anticipate issues in customer environments, advising customers on how to operate and optimize their solutions in line with Microsoft best practices. Apply structured methodologies and governance to communicate and minimize technical and business risks, while adhering to rigorous quality standards in solution design and delivery.
• Accelerating Adoption: Develop strong customer relationships to proactively uncover, escalate, and resolve technical blockers, thereby accelerating cloud consumption and solution implementation. Coordinate with account and support teams to route non-technical issues appropriately. Apply broad architecture knowledge (across Microsoft and third-party solutions) to meet business IT requirements and overcome constraints, often shaping and refining customer requirements in the process.
• Driving Value & Consumption: Leverage deep understanding of Microsoft's product portfolio (and competitor offerings) to identify opportunities for customers to gain additional value. Partner with Customer Success Account Managers and other account team members to drive growth in cloud usage and adoption through cost optimization, performance efficiency, and security enhancements. Lead architecture design sessions, resiliency reviews, and technical optimizations that result in production deployments and increased usage of Microsoft security and cloud solutions. Ensure that customer applications are architected with minimal points of failure. Provide thought leadership during implementation to help customers achieve their business outcomes and to fulfill Microsoft's Customer Promise.
• Industry Leadership: Stay current with industry trends and competitor architectures. Use this knowledge to highlight Microsoft's strengths and unique value propositions in security and reliability. Act as a trusted industry expert, guiding customers in choosing Microsoft solutions over competitors and influencing broader industry direction through your engagements. You will often work under the radar of executive management, so professionalism and strategic insight are key.

• Experience: 9+ years of industry experience architecting, implementing, and/or supporting complex, mission-critical security solutions in Microsoft cloud and hybrid environments. Proven ability to guide customers through secure design, deployment, go-live, and operational support for critical workloads.
• Technical Breadth: Deep expertise in Microsoft security technologies such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender XDR. Familiarity with broader Azure security services (e.g., Azure Policy, Azure Key Vault, Azure Monitor) and Microsoft 365 security capabilities is highly desirable.
• Microsoft Stack Knowledge: Strong understanding of core Microsoft platforms and infrastructure, including Azure fundamentals, Windows Server, Active Directory, and PowerShell automation. Ability to integrate and leverage these technologies as part of end-to-end security architectures.
• Strategic Alignment: Familiarity with Microsoft's strategic security initiatives and frameworks, including the Secure Future Initiative (SFI) and the Security Adoption Framework (SAF). Demonstrated commitment to applying secure-by-design and secure-by-default principles, and aligning customer solutions with Microsoft's Zero Trust model and overall security best practices.
• Security Architecture & Supportability: Proven experience reviewing and optimizing security architectures for reliability, performance, and compliance. Ability to assess and mitigate vulnerabilities, implement threat protection strategies, and improve the monitoring and supportability of enterprise environments.
• Problem Solving & Leadership: Exceptional analytical and troubleshooting skills with a track record of resolving complex technical issues under pressure. Strong technical leadership in driving security initiatives or critical incident response, with the ability to influence, mentor, and guide teams in best practices.
• Architecture Fundamentals: Solid grasp of cloud and hybrid security architecture principles (e.g., defense-in-depth, least privilege, network segmentation). Strong understanding of networking, identity management, and data protection fundamentals, with the ability to design systems for high availability, resilience, and robust threat defense.
• Team Collaboration: Proven ability to work effectively in a global, cross-functional team environment. Comfortable collaborating across time zones and cultures, and working closely with internal engineering, support, and program management teams to deliver unified solutions for customers.
• Adaptability: Highly adaptable and eager to learn new technologies, emerging threats, and industry trends. Willingness to continuously expand technical expertise across different security domains (and to incorporate Microsoft security frameworks like SAF) in response to evolving customer and business needs.
• Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English. Able to clearly articulate complex security concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, and confidently lead discussions and presentations with enterprise customers, Microsoft senior leadership, and partners.
• Initiative & Drive: Self-motivated, customer-centric professional with a strong drive to improve services and processes. Demonstrated ability to excel in fast-paced environments, balance multiple priorities, and take ownership of delivering results that align with Microsoft's security vision and the goals of the Secure Future Initiative.
• Certifications: (Mandatory) Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500) or Microsoft Certified: Cybersecurity Architect Expert (SC Preferred) Additional certifications such as Microsoft SC-900, SC-200, and industry certifications (e.g., CISSP, CISM, CEH, CCSP, GSEC).
• Resource Inventory & Analysis: Skilled in leveraging Azure Resource Graph to query, inventory, and analyse metadata across large-scale cloud environments, supporting governance, compliance, and operational insights.
• Integration & APIs: Hands-on experience automating reporting and integrating telemetry using Microsoft Graph APIs and other programmatic interfaces to streamline security operations and enhance data-driven decision-making.
• Telemetry & Monitoring: Practical experience configuring and managing telemetry pipelines using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics Workspaces, and Diagnostic Settings to enable deep visibility into cloud workloads and infrastructure health

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.