Technical Specialist Manager – Azure Application Innovation & D&AI Full-time

Microsoft’s Commercial Solution Area (CSA) sets the sales strategy, leads technical sales, and operations as a hub for the Commercial Solution Areas and Support Services that power the Microsoft Cloud. We work closely with other Microsoft teams and partners, especially Customer Success, Marketing, and the Account team, to ensure those solutions meet our customers’ needs.

You will be a part of the Azure technical sales team, that acts as trusted advisors and subject matter experts with core capability and expertise in Migration/App Modernization, GitHub & VS Studio & the Azure Data and AI platform. You will work with customers to realize digital transformation through cloud computing. We also support customers in evaluating their applications and business requirements, recommend solutions that meet their requirements, and demonstrate these solutions to win the technical decision. Microsoft Technical Specialist Managers build, develop and lead teams of Technical Specialists to identify and win over the technical decision maker in the Business and IT department of our Enterprise Customers. You and your team will drive technical decisions for the customer that helps them achieve Business value with the Microsoft Platform, and thereby secure long-term sustainable growth for Microsoft. As a Technical Specialist Manager, you will be a key leader to helping customers embrace and succeed through digital transformation.

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:

• People Management: Develop, lead and coach a high-performing technology specialist team by hiring diverse talent, prioritizing development, leading by example and by preparing people for more senior positions in other parts of the organization.
• Collaborative: Drives strong partnership with technical sales teams and other teams engaging in the customer (e.g., partners, services, Customer Success, engineering support, etc.) to identify new business opportunities
• Solution Design and Proof- Oversee and coach team in guiding customers through digital transformation solutions and applying advanced sales methodologies, while envisioning new and innovative solutions that use Microsoft technology to meet customer needs and identifying new technical and business trends/needs serving as the voice of the customer to Microsoft.
• Customer centricity: Lead from the front, personally engaging at CxO level to support and coach teams on opportunity discovery and acceleration. Engages with technical and business leaders on both business and technical outcomes to drive customer value.
• Partner Engagement: You will maximize area-level capacity and capabilities of scaling through partners by coaching the team to grow partner network, identifying gaps and promoting Microsoft within the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., account teams). You will raise escalations or alleviate blockers through collaboration with manager-level counterparts in cross-functional groups.

• Own technical discussions with customers leveraging processes and tools, demos and programs; using consultative sales methodology and technical expertise to influence customer vision; establish rules of engagement for extended teams. Support the creation of new pipelines in the account team by identifying new opportunities.
• Build technology strategy by mapping the agreed customer business outcomes into an appropriate Azure technology framework, resolving concerns, preventing and removing technical blockers, and translating technology complexity into business impact. Work with the customer, account team, and partners to drive and support the customer’s AI transformation inclusive of AI Applications and data foundation.
• Uses knowledge of customer context, and deep technical, domain, and industry knowledge to build credibility with customers.
• Be the Voice of Customer to share insights and best practices, connect with Engineering team and Global Black Belts to remove key blockers and drive product improvements.
• Maintain and grow expertise in developer tools, cloud native architecture and technologies, keeping up to date with market trends and competitive insights

Qualifications:

This role is for a technical specialist manager, Entrerprise Solution Architect Lead and/or Product Owner lead who is proficient in building intelligent applications using Azure AI technologies. The ideal candidate should have the following:

• Significant technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR equivalent experience.
• OR Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business or related field AND relevant experience in technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
• OR Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND strong experience with technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience

• Developer: Proficient in modern development practices and frameworks, especially C# and Java.
• Intelligent Applications Expert: Expertise in integrating AI and machine learning into applications, leveraging Azure AI services. Skilled in developing intelligent solutions that utilize data to provide actionable insights, automate processes, and enhance user experiences. Proficient in using Azure Cognitive Services, Machine Learning, and AI models to build innovative and intelligent applications.
• Pre-sales: Skilled in creating and presenting MVPs (Minimum Viable Products), POCs (Proof of Concepts), and demos to clients using Azure AI technologies.
• Sales Support: Able to support and take ownership throughout the sales cycle, ensuring technical solutions align with client needs and sales goals.
• Team Player & Public Speaker: Effective collaborator and communicator, comfortable speaking in public settings to explain technical concepts and solutions.
• Comprehensive experience with all aspects of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), ensuring high-quality and efficient development processes from inception to deployment and maintenance.
• Experience in working with large enterprises and complex projects.
• Certifications in Azure AI Engineer Associate and Azure DevOps Engineer Expert are preferred.

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 .

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.