We are looking for a highly motivated and passionate Cloud Solution Architect for Cloud Applications and Infrastructure solutions to lead with high priority customer initiatives on the Microsoft Azure Platform in collaboration with customers and various Microsoft Global teams. This is a customer facing role, owning the overall technical relationship between the customer and Microsoft Azure Infrastructure and Applications Development Platform. 

 You will own the Cloud Infrastructure technical customer engagements including architectural design sessions, specific implementation projects and/or pilots/PoCs/MVPs. The ideal candidate will have experience in customer-facing roles and success leading deep technical architecture discussions with senior customer executives, Enterprise Architects, IT Management and Developers.

 Microsoft Azure helps customers expand beyond the limits of their current computing platform with the freedom to build, manage and deploy their applications anywhere with Azure. Using their preferred languages, frameworks, and infrastructure – even their own data center and other clouds. With help from Azure, customers and partners have everything they need to build their next great solution. Azure, Invent with purpose. 

 Responsibilities

Understanding customers' overall applications portfolio, IT and business priorities and success measures to design implementation architectures and solutions (Microsoft and 3rd party solutions) using PaaS, DevOps & Advanced Application coding

Apply technical knowledge and customer insights to create a modernization roadmap. Architect solutions to meet business and IT needs, ensuring technical viability of new projects and successful deployments, while orchestrating key resources and infusing key Infrastructure technologies (e.g. Windows and Linux IaaS, Security, Networking, etc.), and Application Development and DevOps technologies (e.g. App Service, containers, serverless, Github, Cloud native, etc.) as appropriate.

Recommend integration strategies, architectures, platforms, and application infrastructure required to successfully implement a complete solution using best practices on Microsoft Azure. 

Lead the execution of technical engagements such as Technical Briefings, Proof of Concepts, Architectural Design Sessions, Hackathons to help partners define and bring new solutions to market. 

Ensure all solutions exhibit high levels of performance, security, scalability, maintainability, and appropriate reusability and reliability upon deployment.

Develop deep relationships with key customer IT decision makers, who drive long-term cloud adoption within their company to enable them to be cloud advocates.

Assess the Customers' knowledge of Azure platform and overall cloud readiness to support customers through a structured learning plan and ensure its delivery through partners.

Qualifications

Professional

Relationship Building - Proven track record of building deep technical relationships with senior IT executives in large or highly strategic accounts. Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solution/projects. required

Problem Solving - Ability to solve customer problems through cloud technologies required.

Collaboration and Communication - Acknowledged for driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication skills. Ability to orchestrate, lead, and influence virtual teams, ensuring successful implementation of customer projects. Presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences (Senior Executives, IT Management, Developers, Security and Network teams) required. 

Technical

Enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, and technology management 

Experience and understanding of large-scale application portfolios in enterprise-wide environments (including migration of on-premises workloads to the cloud) required

Subject matter expertise in two or more of the following:

Deep domain expertise of cloud infrastructure solutions (i.e. Windows and Linux IaaS, SAP, BCDR, Security, Management, Storage, Networking, OSS, Infra Security, Containers and Infra as a code technologies) required

Experience in advanced areas of networking, Linux, SDN, virtualization, open protocols, application acceleration and load balancing, DNS, VPNs and their application to PaaS/IaaS technologies, or large-scale VMware deployments - desirable

Identity, Security Architecture, Security Management and Network Security, additionally good experience required (2+ years) in Compute, Networking, Storage, Containers, Migration Technique, Resiliency and DevOps. - required

Deep domain expertise in 2 or more of the following:

Networking technologies - ExpressRoute, VWAN or similar preferred

VMware technologies – Azure VMware service or similar preferred

Cloud Application Development solutions (e.g., PaaS, Serverless, API Management);

Container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry);

Continuous integration technologies (e.g., Jenkins, Spinnaker, Azure for DevOps, Chef, Puppet).

Web application server technologies, cloud application design, software architecture and practices; (design/development/deployment, Agile, SCRUM, ALM)

one or more of the following programming languages: C++, C#, Java, Node.js, JSON, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, Pig/Hive

Prior work experience in a Consulting/Architecture position within a Software and/or Services company such as Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Oracle, Teradata, Netezza, SAP, Cloudera/Hortonworks, Snowflake, MapR

Certification in one of the following technologies preferred: Cloud, mobile, web application development, cloud-native application architecture (i.e., containers, microservices, API management), modern software development techniques like DevOps and CI/CD tool chains (i.e., Jenkins, Spinnaker, Azure developer services, GitHub) and container orchestration systems (i.e. Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, Azure Kubernetes Service, GitHub). 

Experience with cloud-native software development methodologies, tools for application development/deployment stages including CI/CD (GitHub, Terraform, Ansible, Chef, Jenkins, Spinnaker, etc.)

Experience with logging/monitoring of hybrid-cloud workloads; ability to learn and work with emerging technologies, methodologies, and solutions in Cloud/IT technology space.

Required/Minimum Qualifications:

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 8+ years experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or cloud/infrastructure technologies

OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or cloud/infrastructure technologies

OR equivalent experience.