This is a great opportunity to be a part of the Global Partner Solutions US organization as an Azure Core (Infrastructure) Cloud Solution Architect working on an initiative focused on training, readiness, and upskilling Microsoft’s software and services partners. You’ll be working on a team of trainers, evangelists, and architects that curates and delivers technical readiness and scale outreach to partner developers, technical decision makers, and architects to drive adoption of Azure, Dynamics, and O365/M365. This team will drive significant impact with our partners by leading our scale enablement efforts that support a strategy of building partner capability and capacity through technical skilling enablement activities.
This is a Microsoft Partner-facing role that is accountable for the development and delivery of consistent and prescriptive partner skilling plans and journeys for Azure Core focusing on the Infrastructure discipline, in both existing and newly recruited partners, and that align to driving the capacity of solutions and offerings. The Cloud Solution Architect will collaborate with Microsoft's internal organizations (such as World Wide Learning, Engineering, Architect communities etc.) to produce, leverage, and scaled enablement programs that bring the best of Microsoft resources aligned to our partner's technical skilling needs.
Responsibilities
Partner Enablement and Execution:
- Technical Enablement Strategy Lead: Jointly develop technical skilling enablement plans and strategies for partners
- Enablement Execution: Lead and or contribute to the delivery of workshops, hackathons, bootcamps, trainings necessary to build the technical skills and expertise of partners
- Partner Skilling and Sharing Best Practices: Network and collaborate with Microsoft’s Engineering and other teams such as our Global Black Belt team on specific skill requirements for partners and the sharing of best practices
- Technical Acumen: Understands technology trends and opportunities, compliance/risk issues by reading, attending webinars, conferences delivered by Industry thought leaders such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, ISG/Saugatuck
- Technical Events and Community Contribution: Attend, and in some cases, present as a SME at Digital Transformation/Technology conferences such as Build or Ignite. Participate in technical panels and user groups, provide insights, and contribute work that is shared across communities such as the Microsoft Partner Community, Microsoft Technical Communities, and internal Microsoft technical communities
- Technical Network: Invests in own LinkedIn Profile to promote value, experiences and expertise. Responsible for building an expansive Network of partner technical contacts and internal contacts including Engineering, Global Black Belts, Marketing, and peer Architects
- Evangelist: Evangelizes partner practice and solutions implementations in scale enablement events, technical briefings, Architecture Review Sessions, and in community engagement such as the Microsoft Partner Community, Microsoft Technical Communities, and internal Microsoft technical communities
Other Key responsibilities include:
- Serve as SME across Azure/Cloud technologies with a strong background in Infrastructure and architecture discipline at a 300 + level
- Build partner technical skills that leads to driving new solution/offer/practice building, and Partner Technology Solutions Roadmaps to deliver apps, practices, and hosting built on and committed to the MS platform
- Driving partner technical capabilities in collaboration with other Cloud Architects (cross-discipline), and the Partner Technology Strategists managing the partner relationships
- Collaborate and build strong relationships with internal Microsoft teams (i.e. Engineering, Worldwide Learning organization, corporate teams, etc.) for curating readiness/training content, and provide feedback to peer organizations, business groups, and our engineering teams
- Curating/Creating and maintaining a partner-ready library of IP, content, and assets across spectrum of self-serve to in-person delivery
- Partner learning journey thought leadership and development that aligns to partner Technical Profiles and Technical Skills Development strategies and prioritized capability areas to drive skilling enablement
- Delivery of scaled enablement activities (training, workshops, hackathons) through a standardized framework of resources that increase technical maturity
- Stay fresh on the most innovative technologies related to cloud computing in the areas of Azure infrastructure (at an experienced level), business applications, application development, DevOps, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (at an awareness level)
- Be an evangelist with customers, partners, and external communities
Other
Qualifications
Successful Cloud Solution Architects are lifelong learners with a strong technical pedigree, an evangelist and enabler by nature. They must have a strong technical network to drive technical influence inside the partner ecosystem, frequently recognized as a valuable influencer and expert inside the community. Candidates need to possess the ability to impact and influence customers and partners with a high degree of autonomy, energy, flexibility and the drive to create real and measurable business results.
Experiences Required and Desired: Education, Key Experiences, Skills and Knowledge:
Professional:
- Relationship Building and Problem Solving
- Ability to solve Partner problems through cloud technologies, leveraging internal and/or external resources. required
- Ability to surface product issues, feeding back data and insights that accelerate fixes and updates preferred
- Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solution/projects. preferred
- Collaboration and Communication
- Inclusive and collaborative – driving teamwork and cross-team alignment required
- Strong evangelist presence, communication and exceptional presentation skills with a high degree of comfort to large and small audiences. required
- Ability to orchestrate, lead, and influence virtual teams required
- Role Specific:
- History of instructing/teaching technical concepts in classes that range from 100 beginner to 400 deep technical knowledge required
- Ability to design teaching modules appropriate for a range of target audiences and effectively deliver them. This includes demonstrations, workshops, hackathons, webinars. required
- Knowledge of MS platform, project management, technical Sales, and technical account management preferred
- Proven history of technical community involvement by writing technical blogs, recording technical videos, leading technical forums and more for others to learn. preferred
- Technical
- Deep understanding of digital transformation business drivers, cloud platforms, emerging computing trends and their impact on partner practice building opportunities
- 4+ years of success in cloud/infrastructure technologies, information technology (IT) consulting/support, systems administration, network operations, software development/support, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting required
- 3-5+ years experience in the following areas of expertise:
- Deep Knowledge of the primary Azure services (Premium/Ultra Storage, ExpressRoute, Specialized Compute, Traffic Manager, Azure Firewall, Scale-Sets, AVD)
- Strong record of accomplishment of implementing Azure services in a variety of distributed computing environments
- Leading highly available and fault-tolerant enterprise and web-scale software deployments
- Large scale migration experience Data Center to Data Center and/or Data Center to Cloud
- Strong practical Linux and Windows-based systems administration skills in a Cloud or Virtualized environment
- Experience managing data center operations, including data assurance, monitoring, alerting and notifications
- Meets/exceeds Azure's leadership principles requirements for this role and functional/technical depth and complexity
- Education
- Technical BS degree or Equivalent work experience
- Certification in one of the following technologies required: Azure Architect, AWS, GCP
The salary for this role in the state of Colorado is between $129,800 to $194,800.
At Microsoft, certain roles are eligible for additional rewards, including annual bonus and stock. These awards are allocated based on individual performance. In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee’s role.
Benefits/perks listed here may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work. US-based employees gain access to healthcare benefits, a 401(k) plan and company match, short-term and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, and fitness benefits, among others.
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.
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