The Azure Data & AI Specialist Leader(M2) is a senior leader within our Enterprise Sales organisation, developing and managing a team of high calibre specialists to help our largest customers modernise their data and drive value from analytics, AI and IOT.

 Leading a large team, this is a senior sales leader with deep technical expertise and business acumen and is a thought leader that can represent the Data and AI solution area with customers and Microsoft internal stakeholders.

 Attributes

• Has a broad understanding of technology trends, market forces and industry imperatives. Builds strong connections with priority partners in order to create a meaningful extension of the team’s sales and technical reach.
• Inspires people, builds multifaceted teams and attracts top talent.
• Can interpret complex market signals to make critical decisions in how the team goes to market.
• Is an influencer and thought leader with business and technical customers, effectively building trust and deep relationships.
• Translate Microsoft technology breadth into business impact through solid business and professional skills in order to accelerate the customer’s digital transformation
• Deep engagement with Area Business Groups, WW Commercial Business, Account teams and Customer success team in order to create a unified and holistic sales approach.
• Drives growth planning for Data & AI, acts as the Chief Compete Officer for Data & AI, primary Area representative for Data & AI review and Corp connections
• Builds strong connections with priority partners in order to create a meaningful extension of the team’s sales and technical reach.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities: 

• Drive day to day business management, operational excellence and execution.
• Thought leader and industry expert in Data and AI.
• Lead sellers to meet revenue and consumption targets, through driving new business opportunities and engagements.
• Build a strong and active business network locally and globally with Microsoft stakeholders, partners and customers

 People Management:  

• Develop high-performing, scaled team of managers and specialists by hiring diverse talent, prioritising career development and leading by example.
• Coach Seller’s with a “challenger mentality” by prompting Seller’s to engage early and lead with new insights on how to grow the customers’ business.  

 Partner Engagement:   

• Bring together Microsoft solutions with Partner solutions, to deliver value to our customers
• Engage local and global partners proactively to accelerate delivery to our customers

 Customer centricity:   

• Build credibility as a domain ‘thought-leader’ representing Microsoft in all engagements
• Build and transform new markets and identify and lead transformational shifts in our customers
• Lead from the front, personally engaging at CxO level to support and coach teams on opportunity discovery and acceleration
• Drive cross-team collaboration in Microsoft, to bring the best that Microsoft has to offer to all our customers

Professional 

• Experience developing high-performing enterprise software platform / cloud platform sales teams and a proven track record of exceeding team quotas/targets at large Software and Cloud Services companies.
• Track record of exceeding team quotas/targets at Microsoft or competitor  
• Management. Successful management of large-scale, complex customer engagements with large direct and virtual teams.
• Coaching direct reports in pipeline management, opportunity management, and account planning
• Strong relationship-building and negotiation skills.  
• Excellent Communicator. Executive level communication skills (both written and verbal), and the ability to mentor others.

 Technical 

• Technical Knowledge. Possess both business acumen expertise and technology knowledge to connect how customer business issues impact their IT environments.
• Certifications. Azure Data Engineer or Azure AI Engineer preferred

 Qualifications

Education 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer &/or Data Science or a similar information technology-related discipline, or in Business Administration, or relevant job experience required. 
• Master’s degree preferred
• Certification in sales, sales management, complex sales training, sales methodologies, broad evangelism through events (presentation skills), and consultative selling preferred
• Additional training or education in Enterprise Architecture preferred