Solution Area Specialists – Azure Data & AI

Overview

Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us to achieve our mission.

As an Azure Data & AI Solution Specialist you will be a senior solution sales leader within our Enterprise Commercial growth business, leading and collaborating a team of technical, partner and consulting resources to advance the sales process and achieve/exceed quarterly Data & AI revenue and usage/consumption targets in your assigned accounts.  You will be a trusted advisor and a Data & AI subject matter expert with core capability and expertise in Data Modernization, Analytics and AI.  You will work with customers to leverage data to help them achieve their business priorities and help guide customer’s journey through Analytics-led Azure Data transformation. You will help customers evaluate their applications and business requirements, recommend solutions that meet their requirements and demonstrate these solutions to win the technical decision. You will need to support customers to remove roadblocks to deployment and drive customer satisfaction. You will help our customers take advantage of our unique hybrid data platform and leading Analytics & AI solutions to realize the value of digital transformation. 

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
  • Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 6+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.
  • Fluency in English and Arabic language.
• Ability to solve customer problems through cloud technologies and expertise in selling to senior business decision makers by aligning & reinforcing the value of the solution to the customer’s overall business pain and/or strategic opportunities and decision criteria.
   
• Understanding of cloud platforms including Azure data platform services, hybrid cloud technologies, developer tools and services and/or complementing solutions. Ability to engage with developers and IT architects as trusted advisors, as well as ability to articulate and present the business value of Microsoft’s Azure Data & AI related cloud solutions and have firm understanding of Microsoft’s strategies. 
   
• Previous experience with Microsoft Advanced Analytics platform (Azure Databricks, Azure Synapse, Microsoft Fabric, PowerBI and Azure Machine Learning) and CosmosDB is a differential.
   
• Lead technical sessions making use of whiteboards or other resources to drive solution discussions leveraging published solution architectures for common infrastructure implementations, and demonstrate Azure Solution using pre-packed Azure Demo environments.
   
• Azure Database Administrator Associate or Azure Data Engineer Associate Certified or prepared to attain certification within 3 months.
   
• Understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs.
   
• Success-driven, works well in a diverse team and enjoy a dynamic and changing environment.
   
• Orchestrate and influence virtual teams to pursue sales opportunities and lead v-teams through influence.

Responsibilities

Sales Execution

• Engages in conversations with customers aligned to their industry to introduce how other workloads could enable digital transformation areas that is aligned with the customer’s industry and turns opportunities into deals. Initiates conversations with customers on digital transformation in one or more solution areas, in collaboration with partners and services. Creates guiding examples of digital transformation through seminars, workshops, webinars, and direct engagement.
• Collaborates with team members to discover new opportunities. Drives incremental revenue growth through personal campaigns (e.g., portfolio analysis) or internal sources (e.g., Marketing). Collaborates with account teams, partners, or services to track and qualify new opportunities. Collaborates with other teams (e.g., account teams) and services to build pipeline. Interfaces with customers and builds relationships via social selling. Applies Microsoft’s sales process (MSP) to determine the quality of the opportunity and whether to proceed.
• Identifies opportunities to drive consumption and grow business with existing customers by initiating conversations, providing demos or quotes, and collaborating with partners or internal teams (e.g., Technical Sales Professionals, Global Black Belts. For licensing transactions and project engagements, ensures rapid and robust deployment plan at point of sale that is validated by services and partners.
• Identifies customer business needs and technology readiness. Contributes to the development of solutions in collaboration with internal teams, partners, and services. Proposes prioritized solutions that align with customers’ needs. Articulates the business value of proposed solutions.
• Proactively builds external stakeholders’ mapping. Collaborates with account teams (e.g., Account Executives) to identify and engage senior business subject matter decision makers at the customer’s/partner’s business.
• Implements strategies to accelerate the closing of deals. Contributes input on strategies to drive and close prioritized opportunities. Coaches less experienced team members in deal plan execution. Implements close plans (e.g., how to map timeline, engage the customer, get customer buy-in and commitment) to de-risk and drive predictable deal closure.

Scaling and Collaboration

• Collaborates with One Commercial Partner (OCP) and with a network of partners to cross-sell and up-sell. Identifies new partners by researching and discussing with partners on customer scenarios. Develops joint proposal with partners. Contributes to developing partner strategies to address gaps in partner capabilities.
• Applies the orchestration model to leverage and expand relationships with internal stakeholders and partners (e.g., Enterprise Operating Unit). Navigates the MSFT organization to bring the best impact to the customer.

Technical Expertise

• Leads conversations and sets up events within Microsoft. Mentors others and develops strategies for best practice sharing across subsidiaries. Contributes ideas that can be instituted across Microsoft.
• Initiates conversations with prospective customers/partners at events to expand external network. Acts as a subject matter expert in one or more solution area(s).*
• Collaborates with the ‘compete’ global black belts (GBB) to analyze competitor products, solutions, and/or services and implements strategies to position Microsoft against competitors in customer communication. Proactively provides analysis of the competitive landscape in supported solution area. Evaluates opportunities and makes recommendations on pursuit or withdrawal. Holistic value of MSFT platform versus single-point solution that positions MSFT favorably against competitors.

Sales Excellence

• Collaborates with partners and resources and leverages customer insights or industry knowledge. Contributes to exploring business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and support customer innovation.
• Reviews feedback report and coaches others on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and decreasing dissatisfaction by establishing recovery action plans to improve clients’ overall experience. Manages and/or orchestrates sales and delivery success through the account team and pursuit team.
• Engages with internal and external stakeholders on business planning, Rhythm of Business (ROB) meetings to review and plan for accounts in the assigned territory.
• Collaborates with extended sales team, partners, and marketing to conduct business analysis (e.g., whitespace analysis, identify industry trends) to pursue high-potential customers and develop a target list of potential business.
• Manages the end-to-end business of the assigned territory. Conducts forecasting for accounts and develops a portfolio and territory plan to drive intentional selling aligned with strategic priorities.
• Completes required training and obtains relevant product and role certifications aligned to the role and workload/industry.

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

î«”Industry leading healthcare

îž¾Educational resources

Discounts on products and services

Savings and investments

ï¡¢Maternity and paternity leave

Generous time away

î­‘Giving programs

î¿”Opportunities to network and connect