Cloud Solutions Architect - Azure Data & AI Solutions

With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. We drive cross-company alignment and execution, ensuring that we consistently exceed customers’ expectations in every interaction, whether in-product, digital, or human-centered. CE&S is responsible for all up services across the company, including consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft’s portfolio of solutions and products. Join CE&S and help us accelerate AI transformation for our customers and the world.

The Customer & Commercial Success (CCS) organization, an organization within MCAPS-Core, is the connected engine that turns Microsoft’s commercial strategy into execution at scale — making it simpler and faster for the field to win for every customer, in every segment, region, and role. The organization brings together planning, landing, execution excellence, services portfolio and delivery, and field activation across ATU, STU, and CSU to accelerate customer value, drive growth, and strengthen the end-to-end experience across every customer moment.

The Customer & Commercial Success Architect’s Office is seeking a Cloud Solutions Architect - Azure Data & AI Solutions with a passion for customer and partner success. In this role, you will focus on driving adoption of Databricks solutions on the Microsoft platform, partnering with Databricks and customers to help them achieve business outcomes from their Microsoft technology investments.

Using deep technical expertise across Databricks solutions and Microsoft Azure Data, Infrastructure, and AI services, you will lead partner and customer technical discussions, resolve blockers that affect customer success projects, and accelerate consumption. You will collaborate with Cloud Solution Architects, Customer Success Account Managers, Engineering, and Partner Development teams to drive measurable customer and partner outcomes. This role offers an opportunity to strengthen your technical leadership, expand your cloud expertise, and accelerate your career growth.

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.

Customer Success Leadership & Business Outcomes

• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to Databricks, customers, and partners, helping them realize business value from Microsoft Azure and Databricks investments.
• Lead architecture reviews, technical strategy discussions, proofs of concept, and production deployments to accelerate adoption of Data, Analytics, AI, and modernization solutions.
• Identify and resolve technical blockers impacting deployment, scalability, adoption, or customer success outcomes.
• Drive Azure consumption, Databricks adoption, and customer success metrics across assigned accounts and partner engagements.
• Collaborate with partner technical and sales teams to identify growth opportunities and expand adoption of Microsoft Data, Analytics, and AI solutions.
• Help partners develop and scale differentiated solutions and services that accelerate customer value realization and cloud adoption.

Solution Enablement & Technical Delivery

• Guide customers and partners in implementing best practices for security, governance, reliability, performance, and operational excellence.
• Lead technical assessments and workload modernization initiatives that accelerate cloud transformation and solution adoption.
• Drive successful implementation and operationalization of enterprise-scale data, analytics, and AI solutions.
• Address complex technical challenges and provide guidance that improves deployment velocity, solution quality, and customer outcomes.
• Support production readiness, operational excellence, and long-term platform success through technical leadership and proactive engagement.

Technical Architecture & Industry Expertise

• Design, validate, and optimize enterprise-scale architectures leveraging Databricks, Azure Data Services, AI Services, and cloud-native technologies.
• Drive architectural reviews and strategic technology assessments for high-impact customer and partner engagements.
• Develop reusable intellectual property (IP), reference architectures, technical guidance, and deployment accelerators to improve scalability and repeatability.
• Influence technology roadmaps and platform decisions through architectural leadership, industry knowledge, and customer insights.
• Maintain deep expertise in Databricks, Azure, Data & AI technologies, industry trends, and competitive offerings.
• Contribute technical thought leadership through customer success stories, best practices, and technical guidance.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Partner Ecosystem

• Collaborate with Databricks, Microsoft Sales, Customer Success, Engineering, Product, and Partner teams to drive customer success and adoption at scale.
• Lead virtual and cross-functional teams to address complex technical challenges and deliver integrated solutions.
• Represent Microsoft and Databricks during customer engagements, executive briefings, industry events, technical communities, and field enablement activities.
• Build strong relationships across stakeholders to align technical strategies with business priorities and customer objectives.
• Share customer and partner insights with Product and Engineering teams to influence product strategy, roadmap priorities, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Operational Excellence & Continuous Learning

• Maintain technical currency through continuous skilling, certifications, and hands-on experience with emerging cloud, Data, and AI technologies.
• Demonstrate a growth mindset by proactively pursuing learning opportunities and sharing expertise across teams.
• Develop and contribute best practices, reusable assets, and technical enablement materials that improve field effectiveness and customer success.
• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement through mentorship, knowledge sharing, and technical leadership.

Other  

• Embody our culture and values. 

Required :

• 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

Other Requirements:

• This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Candidates must have authorization to work in the United States that does not now or in the future require employer sponsorship. 

Preferred:

• Deep expertise in Databricks and modern Data & AI platforms, with demonstrated experience designing and deploying enterprise-scale Azure solutions—including Azure Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure AI Services, and Azure Machine Learning—to support data engineering, analytics, machine learning, and Generative AI workloads; relevant certifications such as Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional, Microsoft Certified: Azure Databricks Data Engineer Associate (DP-750), or equivalent are preferred.
• Strong background in building and modernizing data platforms, including data lakes, data warehouses, streaming architectures, and advanced analytics environments.
• Demonstrated success in customer-facing architecture, consulting, technical sales, customer success, or solution delivery roles, supporting complex enterprise transformations.
• Solid understanding of cloud architecture and operational excellence, including security, identity, networking, governance, reliability, scalability, and performance optimization.
• Experience influencing and engaging with executive stakeholders, technical decision-makers, architects, and engineering teams to drive strategic outcomes.
• Deep understanding of digital transformation trends, cloud platforms, and emerging Data & AI technologies, with the ability to translate technology capabilities into business value.
• Proven ability to lead the design, implementation, modernization, or support of large-scale distributed applications, data platforms, and analytics solutions.
• Excellent communication, presentation, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.
• Insightful listening: Uses cognitive and behavioral listening techniques, asks thoughtful questions to understand partner and customer needs, business drivers, and operating environments, and goes beyond surface-level responses to uncover root issues.
• Situational fluency: Demonstrates self-awareness, interprets verbal and non-verbal cues, and adapts customer conversations based on the business context, audience needs, and engagement dynamics.
• Relationship building and trusted advisership: Builds trust, establishes credibility, and uses relationship mapping across account teams and customer stakeholders to strengthen engagement quality and business impact.
• Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework foundations: Describes the five pillars of the Well-Architected Framework, explains how they are interconnected, applies Cloud Adoption Framework principles in cloud strategy and architecture conversations, and summarizes the relationship, commonalities, and differences between the two frameworks.
• Architecture design: Applies design thinking to create architectures that deliver customer value while incorporating policies, governance requirements, and existing customer systems into the overall solution framework.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and / or government security screening requirements are required for this role.  These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire / transfer and every two years thereafter.

Cloud Solution Architecture IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $106,400 - $203,600 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $137,600 - $222,600 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.