Cloud Solution Architect-Cloud & AI Apps

In the Small Medium Enterprise & Channel (SME&C) team, we are looking for people with a passion for delivering customer success. As a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) - Cloud & AI Apps reporting to the Cloud Solution Architect Manager you will enable SMC (Small, Medium, and Corporate) customers & Partners to achieve their business outcomes, based on their investments in Microsoft technology. Leveraging your leading technical team’s expertise, you will drive the team to ensure customers get value from their Microsoft investments 

In this role you will:

• Adapt business models, plans, and solutions to insights
• Act as the voice of the customers (VOC)/partners across communities to add and prioritize
• Leverages and champions an existing architecture approach to achieve agreed commitments to the customer/partner
• Demonstrate and prove solutions capability and value
• Apply broad technical knowledge across various architecture solutions to meet requirements and resolve identified constraints
• Lead customer/partner projects that implement technical architecture
• Identify, escalate, and work to resolve technical blockers and route non-technical issues for removal
• Adapt methodology and apply governance to minimize business and technical risks
• Generate new ideas for changes and improvements
• Develop and expand existing impactful relationships with stakeholders
• Respectfully challenge customers/partners when going in the wrong direction and escalate appropriately
• Identify Microsoft's strengths over competitive solutions to convince customers of solution
• Share ideas, insight, and strategic, technical input with internal teams using a thorough knowledge of specific Microsoft products and their context in the competitive landscape
• Participate in external architect community events and share learnings with the internal team
• Lead architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization that result in production deployment application and increase customer usage/Azure Consumed Revenue

The CSA drives delivery execution through preparedness, precision delivery, overall utilization, and high customer satisfaction in a cost-efficient manner

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.  

The ideal candidate will have experience in customer-facing roles and success in leading in-depth technical Application development architecture discussions with senior customer executives, Architects, IT Management, and Developers to drive value to our customers and is open to travel to customer site as needed by business. 

• Understanding Customer/Partner Technical Environment (Insights about Customer/Partner and Industry): Gather customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and map architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Adapt business models, plans, and solutions to insights
• Understanding Customer/Partner Technical Environment (Internal Advocacy): Act as the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner by driving new feedback, gaps, blockers, insights, resources, etc. across communities to track, add, and prioritize, using established channels (e.g., UAT/TFT). 
• Architecture Design and Deployment (Architecture Proposals): Receive and synthesize data about customer/partner business and technical requirements, address them with technical architecture(s), demonstrate and prove those solutions capability and business value through design collaboration sessions with the customer/partner
• Architecture Design and Deployment (Requirements and Constraints): Apply broad technical knowledge across various architecture solutions to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified technical constraints. Help to shape and enhance customers' requirements
• Application Development, Architecture Design and Deployment (Resolving Blockers): Identify, escalate, and work to resolve technical blockers (e.g., changing configurations, sample coding) to accelerate architecture implementations and routes non-technical issues for removal by the appropriate party
• Trusted Advisor (Challenger Mindset): Respectfully challenge customers/partners when going in the wrong direction and escalate appropriately
• Trusted Advisor (Competitor Insights/ Differentiated Value Proposition): Understand the competitor's architecture solutions and identify Microsoft's strengths over competitive solutions to drive conversations with customers/partners and convince them of solution
• Customer Usage: Lead architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization that result in production deployment application and increase customer business value. Drive efforts to ensure that the customer's environment and applications are well-architected
• Customer Satisfaction – Deliver positive Customer Satisfaction and become trusted advisors to customers by leveraging solution area expertise to enable defined Customer Success Plan outcomes

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 10+ years technical leadership experience in relevant area of business OR equivalent experience
• 5+ years of experience in object-oriented programming skills, cloud application architecture and microservices development for public clouds
• 5+ years of experience in capturing application requirements, design review meetings, development, designing and deploying software using automated processes and troubleshooting and resolving software defects over Pure Cloud and/or Hybrid environments
• 5+ years of experience working with Agile/Scrum, CI/CD or DevOps models involving multiple disciplines of coding, testing and deployment Experience in application development leveraging the GitHub ecosystem Solution Architecture (e.g., SOA, enterprise architecture)
• Solid Solution Design and Development skills Experience with Modern .NET technologies (e.g., .NET 8/9, ASP.NET Core, EF Core,  and Dapr)

 Technical Expertise: 

• The role requires knowledge and experience in the following technologies/areas so experience in some of these areas will be expected (Note: Not all skills are mandatory to have):
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Container Apps, Containers and Orchestrators & Building Cloud Native Applications using Microservices Arch
• Azure Functions
• Azure DevOps & Secure DevOps: Application Security Principles and Practices
• Azure App Service
• Azure API Management
• Azure App Dev using broader range of Azure PAAS Services
• Azure Application Security
• Azure Application Insights
• Azure Redis cache
• Azure Cosmos DB & Azure SQLAzure Key Vault
• Azure Service Bus
• Azure EventHub
• GitHub, GitHub Actions, GitHub Advanced Security
• Developing Cross-Platform Web Apps with ASP.NET Core
• Rest APIs
• Knowledge & Real World working experience working on Azure AI on topics such as Azure AI Foundry, OpenAI, MLOps, Semantic. Kernel , langchain, GraphRag, RAG, CLU, custom speech service , MCP, A2A , custom copilot , Agentic application , Autogen , SQLRAG, cosmos optimization , Fabric, Data model , Machine Learning, Agentic AI (Agent Service) will be an major advantage

Other areas we look for real world demonstrated ability are:

• Face-to-face customer engagement skills
• Technical Delivery and Customer facing presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences
• Must have the ability to take on internal initiatives to create services opportunities, and work in a fast-paced environment while balancing multiple demands, addressing shifting priorities, and maintaining focus
• Troubleshooting knowledge & skills, Microsoft Certifications qualifications desirable

Additional qualifications expected:

• Analytical Problem Solving
• Building Customer/Partner Relationships
• Leadership   

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.