Cloud Solution Architect – Data Platform in London, United Kingdom

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, services, and partnerships. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers achieve their business outcomes faster with technology that does more.

As part of the UK Customer Success Unit you will have the opportunity to empower the largest Enterprise customers in the UK to take advantage of the Azure platform.

Azure is the most comprehensive, innovative and flexible cloud platform today and Microsoft is hiring professionals that will drive customer cloud adoption within the most important companies in the market. We are always learning. Insatiably curious. We lean into uncertainty, take risks, and learn quickly from our mistakes. We build on each other’s ideas because we are better together. We stand in awe of what humans dare to achieve and are motivated every day to empower others to do more and achieve more through our technology and innovation. Together we make a difference.

This is a customer facing role, delivering to customers across Industries to enable Customer Success, through migration and adoption of the Azure Platform and technologies and leveraging WW Best Practices. We are looking for a great problem solver who is highly proactive, plans for pitfalls, prioritises ruthlessly for impact and who loves working with technology and customers. If you are looking to develop your Azure skills, we would love to teach you, so you can be successful in this role.

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.

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

Responsibilities

Customer Centricity​

• Customer Satisfaction – Drive positive Customer Satisfaction & become a trusted advisor.​

• Customer/Partner Insights – Provide feedback & insights from customers/partners.​​

Business Impact​

• Consumption (Cloud & Support) growth – Develop opportunities to drive Customer Success business results & help Customers get value from their Microsoft investments.​

• Resolution of Customer Blockers – Identify resolutions to Customer blockers by leveraging SA subject matter expertise. Deliver according to MS best practices & using repeatable IP. ​

​Technical Leadership ​

• Trusted Advisor – guide customer journeys to our Cloud & ready them to innovate with AI, providing thought leadership by constructively challenging customer thinking, applying knowledge of their situation, Azure Infra subject matter expertise, IP & industry/market insights and through delivery of WW Microsoft best practices, such as Well Architected Framework Value Based Deliveries.

• Accelerate customer outcomes – Share expertise, contribute to IP creation & re-use to accelerate customer outcomes. ​

Successful Cloud Solution Architects achieve results by:​​

1. Customer Obsession, matching customer needs with appropriate Microsoft resources and repeatable IP, e.g., by giving the customer confidence that we can help them achieve their desired business outcomes, including readying them for AI, using Value Based Delivery.​

2. ​Understanding the critical levers that impact achievement of targets/ business objectives and planning/ forecasting ahead to overcome any associated constraints or risks ie. lead times for customer resources.​

3. ​Continuously building their capabilities to meet MS/Customer priorities and personal career development needs, e.g., by proactively leveraging career stage guidance and taking ownership for planning technical skilling & personal development and activities.​

4. Actively contribute to the success of others by engaging with your local & global communities, coaching and mentoring others and contributing to team success through IP sharing.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications (RQs/MQs)

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business,

• AND/OR related field experience in data platform delivery (eg cloud-scale analytics, databases or data warehousing), information technology (IT) consulting/support, systems administration, network operations, software development/support, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting or related field

Professional Experience – Proven success in technology sector with either technical sales, projects, architecture, design, implementation, and/or delivery support.

 

Relationship Building –  Proven track record of building deep technical relationships with people, experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solution/projects.

 

Problem Solving . Passion and ability to solve technical problems.

 

Collaboration and Communication Acknowledged for driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication skills. Ability to orchestrate, lead, and influence virtual teams, ensuring successful implementation of customer projects. Presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences (Senior Executives, IT Management, Data Analysts, Engineers).

Technical

 

• Deep domain expertise in enterprise-scale technical deployments in one or more of the Data-specific areas, such as Azure SQL Data (IaaS/PaaS), deployments and migrations to the cloud, Open-source database deployments and migrations, Cloud Scale Analytics, Data Governance, Lakehouse architecture, data warehousing. Databricks and/ or Snowflake experience would be valuable.

• Experience creating Data & Analytics Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) for customers that lead to production deployments. Experience in conducting architecture reviews, troubleshooting optimising and scaling production environments.

• Familiarity with the Agile methodology, DevOps and CI/CD tool chains (i.e., Azure Developer Services, GitHub) and container orchestration systems (i.e., Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, Azure Kubernetes Service, GitHub).

• The technical aptitude and experience to learn new technologies and understand market and relevant cloud trends. Thought Leader in the key Data & Analytics scenarios that are driving digital transformation in key industries such as Retail, Financial Services, Healthcare etc.

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) .