Cloud Solution Architect

At Small Medium Enterprises and Channel (SME&C), we are leading a high-growth, AI-powered global sales team—one that is deeply connected to our partners and driven by customer success. By uniting our Small Medium Business, Corporate, Strategy, and Partner teams, we are unlocking the largest customer opportunity, backed by the industry's most significant investments. Leveraging the power of AI and our extensive partner ecosystem, we are redefining how businesses of all sizes adopt technology to drive growth and innovation. SME&C is more than a sales organization—it's a culture of innovation, opportunity, and inclusivity. Here, you'll be part of a diverse, high-performing, and customer-obsessed team where collaboration, connection, and continuous learning fuel everything we do. If you thrive in a fast-paced, digital-first environment and are eager to make a meaningful impact, explore how SME&C can be the next step in your career. Together, we are shaping the future of business.

We're looking for a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) who specializes in data platforms and analytics to help customers build secure, scalable, and AI-ready solutions on Microsoft Azure. In this customer-facing role, you'll deliver engagements that span architecture design, proof of concepts, and production deployments, ensuring performance, resiliency, and security across mission-critical workloads. As part of the Cloud + AI Data team, you'll leverage existing Repeatable IP and execution engines with accountability to drive delivery excellence, accelerate adoption, and ensure a successful deployment for the customer for services like Microsoft Fabric, Azure Databricks, Cosmos DB, and Purview. You'll collaborate with engineering teams, share best practices, and stay current with evolving trends to help customers unlock the full value of their data and AI investments. This role is flexible in that you can work up to [50% / up to 100% from home / This role is Microsoft onsite only].

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.

• Engage with customer IT and business leaders to understand their data estate, priorities, and success measures, and design secure, scalable Data & AI solutions that deliver measurable business value.
• Lead architecture design sessions, develop Data & Analytics roadmaps, and drive Proof of Concepts (POCs) and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) to accelerate adoption and ensure long-term technical viability.
• Own the end-to-end technical delivery results, ensuring completeness and accuracy of consumption and customer success plans in collaboration with the CSAM.
• Deliver repeatable intellectual property (IP) to achieve targeted outcomes, accelerate Azure Consumed Revenue (ACR), and contribute to centralized IP development initiatives.
• Provide delivery oversight and escalation support for key Factory engagements across Data & Analytics workloads.
• Drive technical excellence by leading the health, resiliency, security, and optimization of mission-critical data workloads, ensuring readiness for production-scale AI use cases.
• Identify and resolve technical blockers, share customer feedback with engineering teams, and influence product improvements through Voice of the Customer insights.
• Maintain deep technical expertise and stay current with market trends, competitive insights, and Microsoft's evolving data and AI capabilities.
• Be accredited and certified to deliver with advanced and expert-level proficiency in priority workloads including Microsoft Fabric, Azure Databricks, Microsoft Purview, Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Cosmos DB.
• Demonstrate a growth mindset by continuously aligning your skills to team and customer needs, contributing to technical communities, and mentoring others to accelerate customer outcomes.

• Required Qualifications (RQs)

• 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

Preferred Qualifications (PQs)

• 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)

Azure and Cloud Security Engineering

Infrastructure, Databases, Networking, Virtual Machines Security

Secrets and Keys security practices

Azure Identity (service principals - managed identities)

Troubleshooting of data logging and audit, security monitoring

Azure Governance and Compliance (Azure policies)

Conditional Access

identity governance and lifecycle

Microsoft/Linux Client/Server Operating Systems Security, including related services (eg Certificate Authority, authentication/authorization mechanisms, encryption, health attestation)

Microsoft Security recommendation experience (eg Securing Privileged Access, Credential Theft Mitigations)

Security Threat Landscape experience including advanced attack vectors and tools (eg Pass the Hash, Golden Ticket, ransomware)

Infrastructure Security experience with competitive cloud security technologies, cloud security platforms, or any of the following:

Active Directory (Kerberos, NTLM, LDAP)

Azure Active Directory, Entra ID (including OpenIDConnect, Oauth2, Saml and WS-Federation)

Cloud workload Threat protection

Cloud Security Posture Management

WAF (Web Application Firewall)

ZTNA (Zero trust network access, Security service edge, SASE)

Stateful firewall. (NG Firewall)

Data encryption and protection key services.

SIEM, and Cloud Security Analytics, clear understanding of Security Operation Center needs

Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)

Identity and Access Management

Good understanding of common network protocols (HTTP-S/TLS/DHCP/DNS)

Microsoft Defender XDR

Microsoft Defender for Identity

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender vulnerability management

Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Microsoft Purview: Data loss prevention (DLP), Information Protection, Insider Risk Management, Privileged Access Management, Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), Compliance: Records Management, Audit / eDiscovery, Data Life Cycle Management

Advanced Hunting

Simulation Training

Threat Analytics

Investigations

Modern Management - Mobility and Security Solutions in any of the following:

Microsoft Intune; Autopilot, Desktop Analytics

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.