Africa Partner Cloud Solution Architect (Azure Data & AI) at Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer web browser. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. It is the world's largest software maker measured by revenues. It is also one of the world's most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in its largest acquisition to date. As of 2013, Microsoft is market dominant in both the IBM PC-compatible operating system and office software suite markets (the latter with Microsoft Office). The company also produces a wide range of other software for desktops and servers, and is active in areas including Internet search (with Bing), the video game industry (with the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles), the digital services market (through MSN), and mobile phones (via the Windows Phone OS). In June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. With the acquisition of Nokia's devices and services division to form Microsoft Mobile Oy, the company re-entered the smartphone hardware market, after its previous attempt, Microsoft Kin, which resulted from their acquisition of Danger Inc.

Overview

As a Partner Solution Architect in Data and AI, you operate as a technology leader for your solution area, and work with global, national systems integrators and ISV's to build and extecute strategies to build technical practices, solutions and drive sales outcomes through the technical capability built. This opportunity will allow you to engage deeply with key partners to influence their technical capability development and drive their business growth through technical innovation.

The role allows for a flexible workstyle and enables working from home partially. 

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 4+ 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.
•  Cloud Technologies specifically Data and AI

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, 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, or related field AND 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).

 Responsibilities

• Gathers partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical strategy, preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps architecture and digital transformation solutions to partner/customer business outcomes. Acts as the voice of the partner by driving new feedback, insights, and resources across internal teams to add and prioritize. Represents the partner to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) to shape products and services by providing insights across the territory. Advocates for the 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. Contributes to and 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 partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected partner experience. Supports definition of 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.
• Contributes expected impact on core priorities:
  • Future proof the partner ecosystem: Build and deliver technical capability and relevant partner solutions with key partners for your solution area
  • Sell what we build: contribute measurable revenue impact to the partner organisation and Microsoft through the build-with investments with the partners.

Method of Application