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Responsibilities

Through our partners, Microsoft brings digital ambitions to life by helping companies empower their employees, engage their customers, optimize their operations, and transform their products. As such, we are looking for a highly motivated and passionate individual to join the Microsoft Partner Success Team (WCB Customer Success) team as a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) for Modern Workplace (MW) Security and Compliance. Joining the PST team as a CSA means you will be playing a critical role helping Microsoft Partners to capitalize on the $2.2 trillion-dollar Digital Transformation market opportunity. Working in PST means you are shaping the world’s largest eco-system of technology companies working to digitally transform the world’s most innovative companies, large and small.

Microsoft welcomes and embraces your individuality! The ideal candidate for the CSA role can come in many forms. This individual is someone who is passionate about technology and one who possesses a strong subset or combination of the requirements listed below.

We embrace flexible working as a core principle of reinventing productivity, and you’ll have flexibility to work from different locations, such as your home office, Microsoft offices around the country, or customer sites.

The Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) in this role will …

• Play a critical role in working with partners on Security & Compliance through solution build and first mile customer engagements including Proof of Concepts, Architectural Design Sessions (ADS), and Hackathons
• Build relationship with partner technical and development resources designing and architecting new solutions based on breadth of Microsoft Security offerings. CSAs deliver value via a portfolio of service delivery engagements optimized to accelerate partner solution builds and first mile customer wins
• Stand out as a Technology expert due to deep solutions knowledge. They can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft engineering teams and blackbelts often surfacing product issues, feeding back value data and insights that accelerate fixes and updates.
• Work across partner types including ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), MSP (Managed Service Providers), and SIs (System Integrators).

Key Responsibilities

• Partner Enablement and Execution
• Technical Enablement: Jointly develop technical enablement plan with partner(s)
• Enablement Execution: Lead and/or contribute to the delivery of workshops, bootcamps, and trainings necessary to build the technical skills and expertise of partners
• Technical Engagement: Lead the execution of deep technical engagements, including; Technical Briefings, Proof of Concepts, Architectural Design Sessions, and Hackathons with the goal of defining and brining new solutions to market
• Skilling and Best Practice Sharing: Network and collaborate with Microsoft’s Engineering , Customer Success Units and Global Black Belt teams on specific skill requirements for partners and the sharing of best practices
• Practice & Solution Development: Improve partners’ success in implementing solutions and/or practice development by increasing the number of FastTrack endorsed architects in the partner’s organization
• Evangelism: Evangelize partners’ practices and solutions in customers’ implementations via Technical briefings and Architecture Review Sessions
• Pre-Sales: Enable partners on technical pre-sales skills while supporting initial partners’ wins

Technical Upskilling and Networking

• Technical Acumen: Maintain technical skills and knowledge of market trends, opportunities, and competitive insights by staying abreast of various in-person and virtual events delivered by Industry thought leaders such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, ISG/Saugatuck
• Technical Networking: Invest in own LinkedIn Profile to promote expertise and experiences. Build an expansive Network of partner technical contacts, as well as internal Microsoft contacts including Engineering, Global Black belts, M&O and peer Architects
• Technical Events and Community Contribution: Attend Digital Transformation/Technology conferences such as Build. Participate in technical panels and user groups, provide insights, and contribute work that is shared across communities such as MSDN and Channel9

Qualifications

Education, Key Experiences, Skills and Knowledge

Professional

• Relationship Building
• Proven track record of building deep sales relationships with CXOs and practice building executives in ISV, MSP, CD and Sis required
• Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solution/projects. required
• Strong partner relationship management skills required
• Problem Solving
• Ability to solve Partner problems through cloud technologies, leveraging internal and/or external resources. required
• Collaboration and Communication
• Acknowledged for driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication skills. required
• Ability to orchestrate, lead, and influence virtual teams; Strong presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences at different levels of organizations. required

Technical

• Deep understanding of digital transformation business drivers, cloud platforms, emerging computing trends and their impact on partner practice building opportunities.
• 8-10+ years of success in consultative/complex technical sales, technology solutions/practice development, architecture, design, implementation, and/or support of highly distributed applications required
• 3-5+ years’ experience (definitions below): Security, Cloud Identity, Threat Management, Compliance, Unified Endpoint Management.
• Additionally, 2+ years in the following skills are preferred: eDiscovery and Audit, Modern Workplace, Competitive product knowledge, Cybersecurity systems, Microsoft licensing

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineer or related field preferred

Certification in one of the following technologies preferred: MS-500 Microsoft 365 Security Administration or AZ-500 Microsoft Azure Security Technologies, MS-100 Microsoft 365 Identity and Services, Information security (CompTIA, CEH, CISSP, CISAM), Security+, External Security Certification

Experiences

Prior work experience in a Consulting/Architecture position within a Software an/or Services company such as Amazon Web Services, Google, RSA, McCafee, CrowdStrike, Cisco desired

Table below is included for reference only

Security: Solutions and architectures for confidentiality, integrity and availability in the cybersecurity defense systems, email security, user behavior and analytics, information protection & governance (AIP, MIP, DLP), SIEM solutions including Azure Sentinel, Microsoft’s Intelligent Security Graph, application management and data classification spaces, deep understanding/experience in zero-trust security concepts

Threat Management: Solutions and architectures in the cybersecurity defense systems, threat protection, endpoint detection and response, anti-malware, persistent threats, threat intelligence solutions spaces. Also includes Azure Sentinel and Azure Security Center.

Cloud Identity: Key solutions and architectures in the cloud-based identity, Microsoft’s Identity Protection, Single Sign-On SAAS integration, and access management solutions such as AAD

Compliance: Privacy, Information Protection and Governance, Insider Risk Management, Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS), Customer Lockbox, compliance management such as Compliance Score and Compliance Manager

eDiscovery and Audit: eDiscovery, Business Advisory Services focused around compliance risks, industry standards and corporate and regulatory issues such as HIPAA, GDPR, California Privacy Act

Unified EndPoint Management: Intune, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS), Windows 10 Enterprise security features

Modern Workplace: Knowledge of/experience in Modern Workplace components such as Microsoft Teams, Exchange, SharePoint, Office, OneDrive for Business, etc.

Requirements gathering: Asking probing questions to uncover basic business outcomes