Cloud Solution Architect -- Data & Analytics

You may have heard we're going through a transformation here at Microsoft.  It's an unprecedented shift in our culture, the way we do business and our approach to the world.  At the heart of that is hiring people have a desire to succeed, a passion to innovate and an insatiable appetite to learn.  If that sounds like you, read on, this may be just the place for you.

Microsoft aspires to help our customers achieve their own digital transformation, demonstrating the power of Microsoft Cloud solutions and services. To this end, Microsoft has invested in a dedicated Customer Success team that will help Microsoft customers successfully adopt Microsoft Cloud solution and services.

We are looking for a Cloud Solution Architect for Data, Analytics & AI to drive high priority customer initiatives on the Microsoft Data Platform in collaboration with customers and the Microsoft field. This is a customer facing role, responsible for providing end-to-end technical guidance and expertise.

This Cloud Solution Architect role is deeply technical, working with our customers to build technical capability, create innovative solutions to their business challenges and uncover new workloads that could be migrated to Azure.

This role will be responsible for the Data, Advanced Analytics and AI technical customer engagement including architectural design sessions, specific implementation projects and/or Proofs of Concepts. The ideal candidate will have experience in customer facing roles and success leading deep technical architecture discussions with senior customer executives to drive cloud deployment.

This role will own the deep technical customer engagement including architectural design sessions, specific implementation projects and Proofs of Concepts as well as collaborating with other Microsoft teams and our partners, always with the Customers' needs at the heart of everything you do.

Customer Success = Microsoft Success.

Key responsibilities include:

• Deliver re-usable Microsoft IP and customised deliverables to drive value through a customer's Unified Support investment with Microsoft, while providing feedback to our content owners for continuous improvement of our IP.
• Lead Architectural Design Sessions to build an implementation plan aligning with customer business goals and their technical environment.
• Drive the deployment of customer workloads onto Azure, helping them realise the benefits of the Microsoft Azure data platform by providing deployment guidance, supporting development of the customers' cloud adoption model, and providing appropriate recommendations to overcome blockers.
• Develop deep relationships with key customer IT decision makers, who drive long-term data platform adoption within their organisation.
• Be the Voice of the Customer; share insights and best practices and connect with our Engineering teams to eliminate blockers and provide customer feedback to help improve our products and services.
• Build upon existing customer investments in the Azure cloud to identify, validate and grow opportunities to accelerate deployment and Azure value realisation by driving best practice solution architecture for both Microsoft and 3rd party solutions.
• Enable our customers to manage their Azure investments through upskilling and maximising value through cost optimisation of deployed workloads.
• Maintain technical skills and knowledge, keeping up to date with market trends and competitive insights.