Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) Core accelerates customer outcomes and business growth. By uniting product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners around a common customer mission, we help customers realize value faster and turn innovation into measurable business impact. Through deep technical expertise and differentiated go-to-market execution, we win competitively, capture market share, and scale repeatable growth motions. We differentiate through value creation - delivering world-class, AI-powered customer experiences that accelerate adoption, strengthen loyalty, and create sustainable competitive advantage, driving growth that outpaces the market.
Within MCAPS-Core, Cloud + AI Platforms (CAIP) is one of the most strategic businesses worldwide at Microsoft. Given the tremendous momentum in customer pursuit of Digital Transformation, there’s never been a more exciting & compelling time to be a part of the Cloud + AI Platform business at Microsoft!
And within CAIP, WorldwideTechnical Success operates as the bridge between product direction, sales strategy, and scalable delivery execution. It plays a pivotal role in enabling the field, building scale through the Field and Factory, development of reusable intellectual property (IP) and assets, managing field technical escalations and product blockers, influencing product direction, and engaging in high-priority customer engagements.
We are seeking a skilled Cloud Solution Architect – Azure Infrastructure who combines strong technical expertise with a customer-focused approach to accelerate Azure infrastructure adoption, modernization and customer success. This role focuses on developing and scaling Azure infrastructure intellectual property, contributing to product direction through customer and partner engagement, supporting migration and implementation initiatives, and collaborating with engineering teams to resolve customer challenges.
The candidate will serve as a trusted advisor across Microsoft, customers, partners, and engineering teams to drive best practices for infrastructure modernization, compute and storage optimization, cloud migration, high availability, resiliency, business continuity, and large-scale Azure infrastructure deployments.
Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We foster a culture of innovation, inclusion, collaboration, and continuous learning where employees are encouraged to make a meaningful impact for customers and the wider technology community.
Responsibilities
Azure Infrastructure Strategy and Intellectual Property Development
Contribute to and maintain Azure Infrastructure intellectual property (IP), including reference architectures, migration frameworks, implementation guidance, design patterns, best practices, workshops, white papers, technical training, and reusable customer-facing assets.
Create and curate guidance for customers migrating infrastructure, workloads, and virtualized environments from on-premises environments and other cloud providers to Azure.
Educate internal teams, partners, and customers on Azure Infrastructure capabilities, design principles, operational best practices, security, resiliency, performance, and governance.
Identify recurring customer challenges and industry trends and translate them into scalable guidance and enablement content that accelerates customer success.
Leverage AI-powered tools and automation to improve content development, architectural analysis, knowledge dissemination, and field enablement.
Product Advocacy and Engineering Engagement
Serve as a liaison between customers, partners, field organizations, consulting teams, and Azure Infrastructure product groups.
Represent customer and partner requirements to engineering teams and advocate for features, enhancements, and platform investments that improve customer outcomes.
Contribute to the collection and synthesis of customer feedback, implementation experiences, and market insights to inform Azure Infrastructure product roadmaps.
Author and present technical papers, architectural recommendations, and customer-driven proposals that help shape future Azure Infrastructure capabilities.
Act as a Voice of the Customer by identifying blockers, escalating systemic issues, and partnering with engineering teams to drive resolution.
Migration and Implementation Enablement
Support internal consulting, delivery, and migration execution teams in the design and implementation of Azure Infrastructure solutions.
Provide architectural guidance for infrastructure modernization efforts, hybrid cloud deployments, data center migrations, and multi-cloud infrastructure scenarios.
Collaborate with delivery teams to validate designs and ensure alignment with Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and Well-Architected Framework principles.
Assist partners and field teams in overcoming technical barriers during large-scale migration and transformation engagements.
Contribute to repeatable migration methodologies, reference architectures, and deployment patterns that improve implementation consistency and customer outcomes.
Community and Technical Leadership
Serve as an Azure Infrastructure advocate across Microsoft, customer, partner, and community ecosystems.
Curate and deliver technical enablement through workshops, OpenHacks, LevelUps, conferences, and community engagements.
Maintain deep expertise in Azure Infrastructure technologies, emerging cloud trends, competitive offerings, and industry best practices.
Foster collaboration across Microsoft teams to accelerate infrastructure innovation, knowledge sharing, and technical excellence.
Other
- Embody our culture and values.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 2+ years experience in 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
Other Requirements:
- Microsoft is unable to sponsor a work visa for this role due to the nature of the role’s job duties.
- Ability 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: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire / transfer and every two years thereafter.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 5+ 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 Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 3+ 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.
- 2+ years’ experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
- 2+ years experience working on technical projects.
2+ years of hands-on experience designing and deploying core Azure Infrastructure services (e.g., Virtual Machines, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Azure Storage, Managed Disks, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Migrate, Availability Zones, Azure Arc, and Azure VMware Solution), with a strong command of high availability, resiliency, business continuity, and performance optimization.
2+ years supporting infrastructure modernization, data center migration, and hybrid or multi-cloud initiatives, including migrating workloads and virtualized environments from on-premises environments or other cloud providers to Azure.
Comfort operating in a developer-centric environment — working with modern developer tools and environments (e.g., IDEs, CLIs, source control) and contributing to a code-based IP portfolio — even if not in a full-time developer role.
Experience with AI-assisted / agentic developer tooling such as GitHub Copilot.
Experience acting as a liaison between customers, partners, field teams, and product engineering groups — synthesizing customer feedback and market insights to inform product roadmaps and advocating for platform enhancements.
- Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, or security certifications).
Cloud Solution Architecture IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $86,100 - $169,800 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 $113,300 - $187,400 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.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field OR equivalent experience, plus 2+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, IT consulting/support, systems administration, or architecture
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire and every two years
- Must be authorized to work in the hiring country without visa sponsorship (Microsoft is unable to sponsor a work visa for this role)
Microsoft Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Microsoft and has not been reviewed or approved by Microsoft.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is presented as broadly competitive overall, with clear role/level/location variation and an emphasis on using posted ranges and band information for apples-to-apples comparisons.
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Retirement Support — Retirement benefits are described as a standout, highlighted by a strong 401(k) match structure and immediate vesting, plus additional plan features for tax-advantaged saving.
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Parental & Family Support — Family-oriented benefits are portrayed as a meaningful strength, with substantial paid parental leave and added supports like back-up care and adoption/surrogacy assistance.
Microsoft Insights
What We Do
At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create. Today, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world.
