Cloud Solution Architect - Cloud & AI Data Platform

Overview We are looking for a Cloud Solution Architect – Cloud & AI Data Platform with deep knowledge in data platforms and analytics to support customers in building secure, scalable, and AI-ready solutions on Microsoft Azure. In this customer-facing role, you’ll guide organizations through their data modernization and AI journeys—leading architectural design sessions, proof-of-concept initiatives, and production deployments for mission-critical workloads. Your focus will be on ensuring performance, resiliency, and security across solutions that drive measurable business value. As a key member of the Cloud & AI Data Platform team, you’ll use established repeatable IP and execution frameworks to deliver high-quality outcomes and accelerate solution adoption. You’ll work with cutting-edge technologies such as Microsoft Fabric, Azure Databricks, Cosmos DB, and Purview, helping unlock the full value of their data and AI investments. 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 Business Impact: Operates according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record (e.g., pipeline updates, time tracking) with minimal guidance from more experienced peers. Collaborates across Microsoft and customer/partner teams through on-strategy delivery with minimal guidance from more experienced peers to achieve customer/partner objectives and increase/partner customer satisfaction. Contributes to managing business and technical risks, adapting methodology and applying governance principles to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. Executes work in compliance with industry and Microsoft guidelines and procedures. With minimal guidance from more experienced peers, prioritizes among competing demands in their work and identifies where impact occurs with customers, ensuring alignment with business priorities and goals. Contributes to the identification, escalation, and mitigation of blockers using appropriate tools and processes to accelerate solution deployment, value realization and usage/consumption with minimal guidance. Continues to develop business, technical, industry, and/or enterprise knowledge and applies it to architecture or support projects with minimal guidance from more experienced peers to help meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified constraints. Identifies new opportunities for Consumption, Usage & Unified expansion (especially Enhanced Solutions) at scale with minimal guidance from more experienced peers based on business value to customer/partner and clear understanding of the Microsoft value proposition for supported platforms to empower cloud success, foster and strengthen security and resiliency, and drive AI innovation. Actively listens to and respectfully challenges customers/partners, building trust to then advocate for alternative architectures/solutions/approaches that shape and/or enhance customer requirements with minimal guidance from more experienced peers. Contributes to the identification and evaluation of industry trends (e.g., customer industry verticals, information technology [IT] industry), gathering of customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and mapping of existing architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Proactively captures opportunities in appropriate systems, processes, and tools, working collaboratively across the organization to execute on opportunities aligned with Microsoft's Customer Engagement Model. Delivers solutions in line with company methodologies (e.g., product offerings such as value-based deliverables [VBDs], advice, training, technical validation) with minimal guidance from more experienced peers, ensuring proven practices and patterns are followed to prepare customers for operational readiness and achievement of their business goals. Leveraging knowledge of change management proven practices, and/or involving the change management team, contributes to helping the customer deploy for long-term organizational adoption to increase customer satisfaction and drive consumption/usage. Guides customers/partners towards a well-architected (e.g., secure, resilient, artificial intelligence [AI]-enabled), and cost- and performance-optimized solution with minimal guidance from more experienced peers to increase retention and expansion opportunities. Contributes to providing feedback to Unified Delivery Team on VBDs to refine and further develop content. Customer Centricity: Focuses on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience with minimal guidance. Learns and develops an understanding of customer goals, and contributes to the definition of customer/partner conditions of success. Addresses customer/partner dissatisfaction with minimal guidance, and may contribute to the execution of strategies to improve customer experience, value realization, and acceleration of transformation. Contributes to identifying and/or translating customer/partner problems into industry solutions aligned with Microsoft product and platform strategy, and explaining why and/or how they meet customer/partner outcomes and return on investment (ROI) goals (e.g., via proof of concept, minimally viable product [MVP], rapid prototype) relative to competitive offerings. Helps the customer/partner adopt and use Microsoft product/platform strategy-aligned (cross-solution area) solutions with minimal guidance from more experienced peers. Builds relationships with technical decision makers (TDMs) with minimal guidance, and contributes to helping build the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs). Supports interactions as needed with customers/partners' key stakeholders for bridging understanding of security, compliance, operational and risk requirements. Acts as the voice of the customer/partner, sharing ideas, feedback, insights, success stories and strategic/technical input with Engineering teams, Product Offerings teams and/or internal communities leveraging relevant insights from feedback tools and systems with minimal guidance from more experienced peers. Contributes to the identification of patterns across customers/partners/territories/industries and leveraging them to develop strategic and actionable insights. May present business cases to program managers, with minimal guidance, to influence product roadmaps, decision-making, bug fix prioritization, and own and drive initiatives as appropriate. Partner Specialization: Gains insight into solution area-specific market opportunities and initiates actions (e.g., reaching out to business stakeholders, obtaining feedback support from more experienced, technical peers) to address them with support from peers and leadership. Guides partners in developing offerings, practices, products, and solutions. Assists the partner throughout initial customer implementations. Delivers technical enablement. Identifies and focuses on opportunities that align with revenue goals. Drives growth of solution utilization pipeline with partner by unblocking technical blockers in customer deals. Provides support to partner and sales teams to clarify specific opportunities through proof of concept and technical pre-sales support. Technical Leadership: Leverages market insights and demand signals with minimal guidance to assist more experienced peers in identifying relevant areas in which to drive upskilling or accreditations based on demand. Demonstrates technical readiness, both depth-aligned to solution area priorities and breadth-aligned to Customer Success Unit (CSU)/corporate initiatives (e.g., security, resilience, AI), and influences less experienced team members to drive their own technical readiness. May act as a mentor, leading readiness and upskilling activities in the team/organization by educating colleagues on technical and non-technical concepts and sharing proven practices. Contributes to virtual teams (v-teams) around technologies and customer/partner challenges, sharing ideas, insights, and strategic, technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger virtual team across Microsoft using knowledge of Microsoft architectures and their context in the competitive landscape. Demonstrates industry knowledge and helps grow recognition for Microsoft solutions by contributing to presentations and engagements with external and internal audiences (e.g., Tech Connect, Build, Ignite) Supports team members on contributing to intellectual property (IP) and identifying patterns where no IP exists (e.g., Copilot and AI scenarios) to help build scalable and repeatable models. Participates in external technical and non-technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, webcasts, blogs, hackathons) that elevate the Microsoft brand and shares learnings across internal teams with minimal guidance from more experienced peers. Identifies gaps through delivery, communicates those gaps to relevant team members and internal/external stakeholders, and connects gaps and patterns across business and technology areas that drive changes and improvements to products, IP (both existing and new), technologies, and/or processes/practices that enable solutions to scale across customers with minimal guidance from more experienced peers. May contribute to the development and modification of Microsoft's structured frameworks and methodologies. Other: Embody our culture and values Qualifications Required Qualifications: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 2+ years 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 OR equivalent experience. Other Requirements: This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Candidates must have authorization to work in the United States that does not now or in the future require employer sponsorship. Preferred Qualifications: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 8+ years 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 OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field OR equivalent experience. 6+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting OR equivalent experience. 4+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external). 4+ years experience working on technical projects. Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications). Cloud Solution Architecture IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $86,100 - $169,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $113,300 - $187,400 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay Cloud Solution Architecture IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $106,400 - $203,600 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $137,600 - $222,600 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. 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 with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations. Insights from previous hires Top skills: Automation, Banking, Architecture, Analytics, C++, C, Business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Account Management, Information Technology Common previous titles: Cloud Solution Architect, Senior Specialist, Senior Solution Engineer, Senior Solution Architect, Solution Engineer, Tech Support Engineer, Senior, Specialist, Senior Software Engineer, Security Researcher