With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success organization is on a mission to empower customers and partners to accelerate business value through differentiated 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’ and partners’ 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.
We are looking for a Principal Cloud Solutions Architect aligned to Microsoft's Partner Solutions Architecture (PSA) team. In this role you will drive partner‑led AI adoption by enabling partners to design, build, and scale responsible AI‑powered solutions on Microsoft Cloud, Azure ML, and AI platforms. The focus is on helping partners translate AI capabilities into secure, scalable, and outcome‑based offerings, including agentic solutions, copilots, and AI‑powered applications that integrate with customer and partner data, business processes, and existing systems aligned with measurable business impact.
The AI‑focused PSA serves as the technical AI authority for partners, guiding solution architecture, extensibility, governance, and readiness to deliver differentiated business outcomes using Microsoft’s AI platform.
Responsibilities
What You’ll Do
- Enable partners to design and build Machine Learning, AI, agentic, and Copilot‑based solutions using Microsoft Azure AI and ML platforms
- Provide architecture guidance, best practices, and hands‑on technical enablement across Azure ML and AI workloads
- Help partners address gaps in solution design, readiness, governance, observability, guardrails, security, and Responsible AI
- Support the evolution from traditional applications to AI‑ and ML-driven, agent‑based, and conversational experiences
- Build working prototypes and reference implementations to accelerate partner solution development
- Advise partners on AI and Azure ML cost architecture and consumption economics, including token-based pricing models, provisioned throughput planning, and model selection for cost and performance optimization
- Deliver strategic business and technical AI and ML transformation discussions to enable and accelerate partners on their Frontier journey
- Guide partners in creating repeatable, transactable, outcome‑based AI offerings, not one‑off projects
Why This Role Matters
As AI rapidly reshapes how customers build software and run their businesses, this role sits at the center of Microsoft’s partner‑led AI scale strategy. You help partners move from experimentation to production, from demos to durable offerings, and from technology delivery to measurable business impact, accelerating customer success and Microsoft AI adoption at scale.
Qualifications
Required/Minimum qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 7+ 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.
Other Requirements
- This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Candidates must have authorization to work in the United States that does not now or in the future require employer sponsorship.
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 12+ 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, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 8+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting OR equivalent experience.
- 6+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
- 6+ years experience leading technical projects.
- Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications).
- 6+ years of experience presenting AI strategy and architecture to CxO-level stakeholders.
- 6+ years of Experience building AI consumption and cost governance architectures, including token economics, and capacity planning for LLM workloads.
- 6+ years Experience designing and building mission-critical AI applications on Azure.
- Deep expertise in agentic AI architectures, including MCP, A2A protocols, Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft Agent Framework, and Copilot Studio.
- Background in building custom Machine Learning and Deep Learning models.
- Microsoft certifications in Artificial Intelligence are highly valued.
Cloud Solution Architecture IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $130,900 - $251,900 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 $165,600 - $272,300 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 (or equivalent) and 7+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, IT consulting, systems administration, software development, architecture, or consulting
- Authorization to work in the United States without employer sponsorship (no visa sponsorship)
- Bachelor's degree and 12+ years experience OR Master's degree and 8+ years experience (preferred alternate experience paths)
- 6+ years experience in customer-facing roles (internal or external)
- 6+ years experience leading technical projects
- Technical certification in cloud (e.g., Azure, AWS, Google Cloud)
- 6+ years presenting AI strategy and architecture to CxO-level stakeholders
- 6+ years building AI consumption and cost governance architectures, including token economics and capacity planning for LLM workloads
- 6+ years designing and building mission-critical AI applications on Azure
- Deep expertise in agentic AI architectures (MCP, A2A protocols, Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft Agent Framework, Copilot Studio)
- Background in building custom Machine Learning and Deep Learning models
- Microsoft certifications in Artificial Intelligence (highly valued)
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
.png)
