Cloud Solution Architect: Manager

We are looking for a Manager to lead our Cloud Solution Architect team within App Innovation. The team is a part of the Customer Success Unit - a customer first, people always organization. We aspire to help our customers achieve their own digital transformation, leveraging the power of Microsoft Cloud solutions. The dedicated Customer Success team will help Microsoft customers successfully realize their business outcomes and secure that they get maximum value of their investments.
In this role this role you are a part of the CSU leadership team where we together build strong relationships with our customers and partners. You are leading a team of senior Cloud Solution Architects that are working close with our customers to support their transformation roadmaps.
You lead your team to gather customer insights and leverage these to design architectures, provide expertise, propose and deliver Microsoft solutions to achieve customer business outcomes. You are a trusted advisor and represents the voice of the customer within Microsoft to ensure alignment with customer feedback and strategy. Your team leverages knowledge of the products and services of Microsoft and its competitors in customer conversations to identify growth opportunities based on knowledge of customer needs.
Responsibilities:
Responsibilities
People Management
Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modelling, coaching, and caring.

• Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
• Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
• Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual's capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

Customer Centricity

• Gather customer insights and design architectures that match customer needs and value propositions.

• Voice of the customer - Represents the customer feedback and strategy to internal teams and influences product roadmaps. The Manager also coaches the team to be trusted advisors and bridge the gap between technical and business decision makers.
• Customer experience and success - Supports and guides the team in delivering customer outcomes, improving customer satisfaction and health, and accelerating customer transformation. Coordinates best practices and shares success stories across the territory.

Business impact

• Drives adherence to Microsoft standards and recommended practices by setting expectations for the team around methodology and governance to ensure that the team identifies, communicates, and minimizes business and technical risks.
• Technical blockers and opportunities - Drives the team to apply business and technical capabilities in complex customer/partner relationships to anticipate, identify, propose resolution, and lead removal of technical blockers through regular technical reviews and check-ins to accelerate consumption and solution implementations and customer outcomes. The Manager also identifies patterns in blockers across business areas or a territory.
• Business metrics and growth - Manages the business by delivering against team targets, achieving business metrics, and ensuring the team delivers on Microsoft's Customer Promise. The Manager also holds teams accountable for proactively using deep knowledge of the products, services, and value propositions of Microsoft and its competitors in customer/partner conversations and for developing new solutions to scale across multiple customers/partners while demonstrating the business case and presenting alternative scenarios.

Technical leadership

• Fosters a continuous technical self-learning culture and community sharing of stories by encouraging and empowering the team to share learnings, and by establishing a cadence to calibrate on challenges and trends that impact the team and other peer teams.

Qualifications:
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. 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.
Required/Minimum 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 equivalent experience.
• 3+ years people management experience, including managing consultant practice managers, technical sales managers, and/or technical architect managers.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications (PQs)

• Strong people manager/leader with at least 5 years people management experience (required)
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work with customers at the C level.
• Experience with managing critical and complex customer situations or incidents.
• Strong interpersonal, presentation and communications skills.
• Understanding of the Azure consumption business and Azure processes is a plus, along with deep expertise in the Azure Application Innovation Solutions Area.