Federal Security Cloud Solutions Architect - CTJ

Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. Growth mindset encourages each of us to lean in and learn what matters most to our customers, to create the foundational knowledge that enables us to make customer-first decisions in everything we do. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us achieve our mission.

The Microsoft Federal organization was established to address the unique mission, legal/regulatory requirements, and procurement rules and processes of the United States Government (USG). Microsoft Federal is committed to ensuring its resources – including appropriately qualified, experienced, and certified personnel (with necessary security clearances or otherwise) are available as needed to meet USG evolving needs. To that end, Microsoft embraces, as a mission-critical philosophy, flexibility in the recruiting, hiring, and workforce assignment of Microsoft Federal personnel. Microsoft Federal personnel can expect to serve in various roles in the Microsoft Federal organization during the course of their career to meet evolving USG needs, regardless of segment – Civilian, Defense, or intelligence community.

We are looking for a highly motivated and passionate Security Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) to drive customer transformation in our Security Solutions on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365. This is a customer facing role, owning architecture, implementation, and production of security solutions for some of our largest Federal customers

Responsibilities

Responsibilities

Customer Centricity

• Gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner by driving new feedback, insights, and resources across internal teams to add and prioritize. Represents the customer/partner to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) to shape products and services by providing insights across the territory. Advocates for the customer/partner at all opportunities and shares customer success stories with the wider internal team.
• Develops and expands existing impactful relationships with customer and partner architects and technical specialists, technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders. Receives and synthesizes data about customer/partner business and technical requirements, addresses them with technical architecture(s), and demonstrates and proves those solutions' capability and value through design collaboration sessions with the customer/partner. Understands how work aligns with customer success plan and meets customer/partner needs by partnering with the appropriate internal teams and resources to deliver customer outcomes. Supports customer skilling by delivering as a trusted technical advisor to ensure customer readiness by facilitating technical discussions and enabling operational health and cloud readiness. Assesses and transfers knowledge to close customer skill gaps.
• Guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery. Supports definition of customer/partner conditions of success. Anticipates customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs and executes strategies to improve experience, value realization, and acceleration of customer transformation.
• Actively listens and respectfully challenges customers/partners when going in the wrong direction, presents insights and alternatives, and takes action appropriately.

Business Impact

• Identifies and anticipates issues and advises customers/partners to operate and optimize performance in accordance with Microsoft best practices. Adapts methodology and applies governance to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. Adheres to quality assurance standards and calculates risks while ensuring excellence in the design and/or delivery of solutions. Leverages standard tools to ensure accurate engagement hygiene.
• Drives customer/partner relationships to anticipate, identify, escalate, and work to resolve technical blockers to accelerate consumption and solution implementations (e.g., by application of technical capabilities). Routes non-technical issues for removal by the appropriate party. Applies broad business and technical knowledge across various architecture or other Microsoft solutions to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified technical constraints. Shapes and enhances customers' requirements.
• Proactively uses knowledge of the products, services, and value propositions of Microsoft and its competitors in customer/partner conversations to identify growth opportunities based on knowledge of customer/partner needs. Contributes to increase in consumption and aligns with Customer Success Account Management or other Account Team members on customer/partner priorities to drive growth in consumption via cost optimization, operational excellence performance efficiency, and security. Drives architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization that result in production deployment application and increase customer/partner usage and consumption. Ensures that the customer/partner's application has as few points of failure as possible. Consults and provides thought leadership for technical solution design, development, and deployment and supports the customer/partner throughout implementation to achieve value outcomes and Microsoft's Customer Promise.
• Understands industry trends and the competitor's architecture solutions and identifies Microsoft's strengths over competitive solutions to drive conversations with customers/partners and convince them of solution.

Technical Leadership

• Learns new technologies or services as advised by leadership team. Aligns professional skill development with role success guidance and manager guidance. Role models effective technical readiness. Acts as a mentor and role model to junior colleagues to educate them on technical and non-technical concepts. Participates in development opportunities (e.g., Ready, Build, Ignite).
• Shares ideas, insights, and strategic technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger virtual team across Microsoft using a thorough knowledge of specific Microsoft products and their context in the competitive landscape. Participates in external technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, Webcasts, blogs, hackathons) and shares learnings with the internal team.
• Generates new ideas for changes and improvements to existing intellectual property (IP), technologies, and processes for designated customers/partners. Drives opportunities for IP reuse, best practice sharing, and consumption acceleration. Proactively identifies gaps through delivery and communicating those gaps to others (e.g., Leadership, managed intellectual property [MIP], Design, and Governance). Applies subject matter expertise to develop new IP that fills identified gaps.

Other

• Embody our culture and values

Qualifications

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND/OR 4+ years work 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.
• Enterprise-scale technical experience with network security, cloud security, hybrid infrastructures, identity management, or secure architecture designs.
• The technical aptitude and experience to learn new cloud security technologies and understand relevant cloud security market trends.
• Experience working with security operations, incident response, or threat detection teams at large enterprise scale.
• Competitive Landscape: Knowledge of cloud security platforms.
• Partners: Understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer need.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Certification in one or more of the following technologies preferred: Microsoft Security Technologies, Cloud Security, OCSP, GIAC Certifications, CCSP Network Security, Incident Response preferred.
• Experience creating cyber threat detections, threat hunting, cyber threat intelligence, or performing incident response.
• Experience in developing identity management strategies that integrate on-prem and cloud infrastructure. 

Top Secret Poly Clearance

The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret Clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) based on a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) with Polygraph. Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate U.S. Government clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.

Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.

US Citizenship: The successful candidate must be a U.S. Citizen. Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of US Citizenship to meet federal government security requirements.

Cloud Screening: Candidates must be able to successfully complete and pass a Microsoft Cloud background screening. Required Cloud Screenings will be administered on a recurring bi-annual basis.

Candidates selected for this position must comply with Federal Executive Order 14042 mandating that federal contractors and subcontractors receive the COVID-19 vaccine by being fully vaccinated before their date of hire, or work with Microsoft to receive an approved religious or medical accommodation

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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