Microsoft Corporation Hiring for Cloud Solution Architecture – Azure Infra at Multiple Locations, India Full Time

With over 17,000 employees worldwide, the mission of the Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers achieve their business outcomes faster with technology that does more.

The Global Customer Success (GCS) organization, an organization within CE&S, is leading the effort to enable customer success on the Microsoft Cloud by harnessing leading, AI-powered capabilities and human expertise to deliver innovation solutions that accelerate business value, drive operational excellence and nurture long term loyalty.

Do you have a passion for Azure IaaS and using best-in-class tools created by Microsoft? Are you looking for a role where you can interact directly with large enterprise customers to improve the stability and performance of the solutions they are deploying in Azure? Do you want to join one of Microsoft””s fastest growing businesses? If so, we are looking for you!

Support Mission Critical (SfMC) is a team delivering dedicated support to Microsoft’s top tier customers using Microsoft technology to build true Mission Critical applications to run their business. These Mission Critical customers are technically savvy and have good expertise in Microsoft technologies they use. The kinds of customers we deal with are companies building the banking backbones, stock exchanges and large government entities.

Within the SfMC team, we support multiple technologies and multiple products being used by our customers via a single team. We are building a dedicated team with diversified skill set so we can deliver an excelled support experience to our customers, all under one roof. CSA’s on our team usually come with a depth of experience in one or two technologies. Within SMC, you will have that opportunity to expand your skill set, learn new technologies and grow your leadership in the technology you excel at, all without being isolated into a particular feature of a particular product. You will deal with high profile customers directly under the radar of executive management and may occasionally get an email or two from them directly!

This role is flexible in that you can work up to 50% from home.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

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.

Additionally responsibilities include:

• Create and Update deep technical understanding and documentation of the customer’s technology and solution (KnowMe) and Workload record(s) for their assigned solutions.

• Deliver Onboarding Assessments and define and drive Delivery Plan

• Regular internal touchpoints with Team Manager, CSAM (Customer Success Account Manager), Mission Critical CSAs (Cloud Solution Architects) and connected teams like Azure Engineering Direct (AED), Azure Rapid Response (ARR) & others to ensure alignments

• Ensure successful delivery of remediation activities

• Identify trends, analyze and coordinate delivery opportunities

• Provide case trend analysis and recommend remediation activities during regular customer reviews

• Function as a Trusted Advisor and provide advisory support with deep technical focused analysis and KnowMe.

• Scoping of engagements, discussing workstreams and assigning actions and agreeing ETAs.

• Provide RCA in coordination with AED (Azure Engineering Direct) for critical incidents (Sev A/0)

• Responsibility for driving towards a stable and robust solution and minimize reactive demand and time to recovery.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of industry experience assessing complex, business critical Azure Infra and Pass environment against Microsoft good practices & supporting customers as they go-live and operate their solution

• 7+ years of working experience with Microsoft Server products and implementation/deployment of Azure Cloud based solutions

• Experience in development on Azure and DevOps processes Identity, governance, and monitoring solutions

• Broad and depth skills on Azure Cloud Platform.

• Experienced in Azure Design Review and deployment, have deep knowledge of Azure IaaS, High Availability, Azure Virtual Machine, Clustering, service resilience and distributed systems, Azure PaaS, Dev Ops, Azure Web Apps and Application Insights technologies will be preferable

• Solid understanding of client/server, networking, and Internet technologies fundamentals

• Strong problem-solving and technical leadership skills

• Works well in a global team environment

• Adaptability is necessary skills – should be ready to ramp up on newer technologies/product based on customer or business need.

• Excellent Communication Skills - presentation and written English. Communication skills that allow you to take lead and control communication with customers, internal Microsoft stake holders and third-party vendors.

• Must have the ability to take on internal initiatives to create services opportunities, and work in a fast-paced environment while balancing multiple demands, addressing shifting priorities, and maintaining focus

Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or cloud/infrastructure technologies OR Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or cloud/infrastructure technologies OR equivalent experience.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .