Microsoft · 9 hours ago
Director, Solution Engineer (Azure)
United States
Full-time
Remote
Lead/Staff, Director/Executive
$131K/yr - $252K/yr
4+ years expMicrosoft is a global leader in Cloud and AI, and they are seeking a Director, Solution Engineer (Azure) to lead a team of Solution Engineers in building Azure-powered solutions for strategic AI-native customers. The role involves coaching team members, engaging with customers, and driving technical strategy while ensuring high-quality customer experiences.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Enterprise SoftwareCloud ComputingCyber SecuritySoftwareProfessional ServicesInformation TechnologyAgentic AIApplication Performance ManagementBusiness DevelopmentDevOpsInformation ServicesManagement Information SystemsNetwork Security
Responsibilities
Engaging with customers and guiding them through technical decisions related to the purchase and use of Microsoft technology. Providing expertise and insights to help customers make informed decisions that align with their technology goals
The ability to identify competitors and evaluate their respective strengths and weaknesses in terms of products, services, marketing, and other areas. This includes an ability to gather intelligence and interpret it for the purposes of business decisions
The ability to understand customer needs through dialogue before recommending products/services
The ability to bring a differentiated, tailored point of view to customer or partner conversations that create a valuable purchase experience for the customer/partner
The ability to map the company's products and solutions to customer modernization and digital transformation plans in order to drive business outcomes
The ability to adapt communications around different technologies, products, and services to the audience's level of understanding
The ability to explain Microsoft's products and services to customers and identify opportunities for customers to grow their business
The ability to appreciate the technical nature of the business, as well as how a particular function relates to that industry and the competition
Building and nurturing strong, long-term relationships with clients and stakeholders to foster trust and enhance customer satisfaction
Demonstrating the capabilities of Microsoft solutions effectively to showcase their value to customers. Applying technical architectures to client scenarios, illustrating how Microsoft technology can address their unique challenges, and collaborating with partners in sell-with scenarios to leverage the partner ecosystem
Serving as a contact point for technical resources, both within the organization and externally through partners. Proactively supporting readiness of clients for implementation and supporting resolution of blockers or challenges to that readiness in order to ensure that customer needs are met
Builds competitive knowledge of team by enabling competitive learning and identifying experts to share knowledge. Enables team to share compete knowledge with internal teams and communities, influence compete strategies, and highlight Microsoft advantages during architecture and capability discussions. Acts as a subject matter expert on a particular competitive discipline(s).Maintains communications with internal partners (e.g., Account Technology Unit [ATU], Customer Service Unit [CSU] manager, SSM) on highest potential customers to pre-align technical resources to customer and customer cases based on account planning and priorities, with the flexibility to realign to minimize orchestration and enable proactive engagements as needed.Works with local marketing and account teams to shape strategic win and customer success plans and tailor to audience for the local markets using knowledge of Microsoft offerings, their context in the competitive landscape, and broader market trends. Ensures team is equipped to execute compete strategy, collaborating with cross-functional groups as needed. Where applicable, oversees team(s) in the building of consumption plans with moderately complex requirements in coordination with Partner and Industry Solutions Delivery teams after customer sign-off
Ensures team members participate in tech communities and drives feedback to improve overall team member experience and effectiveness at subsidiary level.Acts as a technical thought leader by sharing best practices (e.g., architectures, materials) and regularly delivering content at Microsoft events (e.g., TechReady). Provides insight into how to identify opportunities to increase solutions/portfolio understanding.Enables and empowers team to develop technical expertise and provide technical insights to internal teams. Acts as a role model by increasing own technical knowledge and serving as a respected technology leader to team. Provides insight onto Corporate, business and product groups, sales strategy, and business reviews for impact
Supports partner technical capacity by monitoring and analyzing resources through interactions, communicating with managers, and identifying new partnership opportunities to build subsidiary strategy.Maximizes area-level capacity and capabilities by coaching team to grow partner network, identifying gaps and promoting Microsoft within the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., account teams). Raises escalations or alleviates blockers through collaboration with manager-level counterparts in cross-functional groups
Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, 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
Proactively identifies and engages with key customer technical decision makers and influencers while engaging sales team. Coaches and enables team to identify and proactively engage with key customer technical decision makers and influencers to help unblock technical obstacles.Enables and empowers team to influence customer decisions and ensure technical wins by streamlining processes and managing the flow of wins, leveraging deep knowledge of processes (e.g., Managed Service Provider [MSP], Managed Certified Professional [MCP]), tools, and programs (e.g., FastTrack, End Customer Investment Funds [ECIFs]). Aligns goals across solution areas and facilitates cross-selling with various workloads (e.g., Apps, Data and Infrastructure)Leverages knowledge of resources (e.g., roles, Microsoft Technology Center [MTC], demo sites, virtual sites, Value Based Delivery [VBD], Customer Success Unit [CSU]) and owns resolution of technical and non-technical blockers by engaging other teams (e.g., engineering, Account Team Unit [ATU], Specialist Team Unit [STU]) and conveying impact. Anticipates and addresses future potential blockers based on needs. Identifies patterns of blockers within area of expertise and drives resolution through local and global escalation.Uses knowledge of customer context, and deep technical, domain, and industry knowledge to build credibility with customers.Ensures consistency and quality through capturing, sharing, and adherence of standards and best practices in customer engagements by implementing cross-functional initiatives to different channels across a subsidiary to drive consistency in technical approach and ensure customer technical experience across teams.Orchestrates team resources and coaches team to maximize impact of customer engagements and drive mid-to long-term strategy through cross-workload capacity planning, prioritization, and utilization of resources. Proactively plans team resources and influences future blueprints. Qualifies and prioritizes opportunities, and holds team accountable for maximizing selling time to achieve scorecard objectives and subsidiary strategy
Applies advanced sales methodologies (e.g., challenger sales) and coaches team in guiding customers through digital transformation solutions and using innovation to challenge solutions against changing technology (e.g., Power Apps).Identifies new technical and business trends and needs, and identifies ideas that can be transformed into solutions that benefit customers/partners, serving as the voice of the customer (VOC) to Microsoft. Ensures input is utilized and solutions for the customer are established at the area level.Coaches team and oversees demonstrations (e.g., architectural design sessions, and proof of concept [POC] sessions, pilots, hackathons) of solutions based on multiple products and position solutions against competitors. Ensures demonstrations enable customers to identify and resolve technical issues with clear criteria and next steps that guarantee deployment of Microsoft technology.Promotes adaptation and extension of architecture patterns to accommodate complex customer requirements and drive integration solutions for industry flavor.Coaches team to envision new and innovative solutions that use Microsoft technology to meet customer needs. Supports team in coordinating with stakeholders to develop solutions for complex sales scenarios. Ensures team capability to execute on those solutions
Qualification
Required
Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business or related field AND 4+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 6+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR 7+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR equivalent experience
Preferred
8+ years technical pre-sales, technical consulting, or technology delivery, or related experience OR equivalent experience
6+ years experience with cloud and hybrid, or on premises infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, industry standards, and/or technology management
3+ years people management experience (including leading virtual teams)
Company
Microsoft
Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Microsoft has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (9192)
2024 (9343)
2023 (7677)
2022 (11403)
2021 (7210)
2020 (7852)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$1MKey Investors
Technology Venture Investors
2022-12-09Post Ipo Equity
1986-03-13IPO
1981-09-01Series Unknown· $1M
Leadership Team
Satya Nadella
Chairman and CEO
Vukani Mngxati
Chief Executive Officer - Microsft South Africa
Recent News
2026-01-16
Morningstar.com
2026-01-16
Company data provided by crunchbase