Azure Infrastructure Technical Sales Manager

In the Small, Medium, Corporate (SMC) business, we have set out with the purpose to empower our customers through the unique value of the Microsoft cloud by building a globally led, digital-first scale organization aligned with partners. As part of local subsidiaries or centers around the world, you will support a dedicated set of customers in identifying and achieving their business objectives through best-in-class digital engagement and partner co-selling. You will also have an opportunity to work cross-collaboratively while living our shared SMC Culture priorities: Diversity and Inclusivity, Wellbeing, Sustainability, and Learning. If you have been described as customer obsessed and have a passion for digital-first solutions, we invite you to learn more about the SMC organization and the value we deliver to our customers, partners, and one another, every day.

Are you inspired to help customers empower their employees, maximize the employee experience, and do great work using the devices and apps they love? We are looking for someone to help customers who are undergoing significant changes to the way they work as we continue to shift into a truly hybrid work model. Microsoft is at the forefront of this transformation come and help organizations rethink aspects of their business in a way that sets them and their people up for success in this new world of work.

As an Azure Infrastructure Technical Sales Manager, you will build, develop and lead a team of Azure Infrastructure Technical Specialists to identify and win over the technical decision makers within our diverse set of Corporate customers. You and your team will drive technical evaluations and decisions that help them achieve measurable outcomes with the Microsoft Azure Platform, thereby securing long-term sustainable growth for Microsoft. Your team will enable and advance customer maturity through direct customer engagement, Pilot deployments, and solution and architectural guidance, while developing deep engagement with internal teams and channel partners to bring holistic relevance and value to our customers. The Technical Specialist Manager is a great coach, mentor, and leader, has a deep affinity for cloud technologies, and loves working closely with their team, their peers, and their customers to deliver success.

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.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Relevant certifications from Microsoft or competitive platforms AND 3+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
• OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or related field AND 4+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
• OR equivalent experience

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting, or related experience.
• 4+ years experience with cloud and hybrid, or on premises infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, industry standards, and/or technology management.
• 1+ year(s) people management experience (including leading virtual teams).

Digital Technology Specialists M4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $103,800 - $200,300 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 $133,700 - $219,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 25, 2024.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form .

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

Responsibilities

People Management

• Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
• Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
• Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
• Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual's capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

Scale Customer Engagement

• Engages with, reaches out to, and coaches and enables team to identify and proactively engage with key customer technical decision makers.
• Uses knowledge of customer context and solution or portfolio expertise to build credibility with customers individually or at scale. Develops technical and market/industry knowledge.
• Enables and empowers team to lead and win customer technical decisions by streamlining processes and managing the flow of wins, leveraging knowledge of processes (e.g., Managed Service Provider [MSP], co-sell partners), tools, and programs (e.g., FastTrack], End Customer Investment Funds [ECIFs]).
• Leverages knowledge of resources (e.g., roles, Microsoft Technology Center, demo sites, virtual sites), with limited managerial support, to assess and remediate technical and non-technical blockers by engaging other teams (e.g., account team unit [ATU], specialist team unit [STU]) and conveying impact. Consolidates cases of common blockers in the area and drives appropriate escalation activities.
• Ensures consistency and quality through adherence of standards and best practices (e.g., managed service provider [MSP], managed certified professional [MCP]) in customer engagements by holding team accountable.
• Orchestrates team resources and coaches team to maximize impact of customer engagements through capacity planning, prioritization, capabilities assessment, and utilization of resources. Prioritizes resources and holds team accountable for maximizing selling time to achieve scorecard objectives and subsidiary strategy.

Scale Through Partners

• Maximizes subsidiary level capacity and capabilities of scaling through partners by coaching team to grow partner network, identifying gaps, and promoting the partner within the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., account teams). Raises escalations or alleviates blockers through collaboration with manager-level counterparts in cross-functional groups.
• Supports partner technical capacity by providing feedback to internal teams (e.g., One Commercial Partner [OCP]).

Build Strategy

• Builds competitive knowledge of team by enabling competitive learning and identifying experts to share knowledge. Enables team to share compete knowledge with internal teams, influence compete strategies, and highlight Microsoft advantages during architecture and capability discussions.
• Coaches and provides support to team to define and execute strategy. Proactively approaches customers to understand and help identify strategic opportunities.
• Supports the voice of the customer (VOC) through escalation, acceleration, and additional emphasis of feedback, blockers, insights, resources, etc. (e.g., OneList) items as needed.
• Pre-aligns technical resources to customer and customer cases based on account planning and priorities, with the flexibility to realign to minimize orchestration and enable proactive engagements as needed.
• Coaches team in working with account teams to shape strategic win plan and tailor Microsoft messaging to audience using knowledge of customer feedback, specific Microsoft solutions, and their context in a competitive landscape. Ensures team is equipped to execute compete strategy, collaborating with cross-functional groups as needed.
• Coaches team to monitor, analyze, or implement action plans to promote customer usage of key/prioritized Microsoft solutions/products that support customer's business outcomes. Identifies opportunities to promote usage in a productive way.

Solution Design and Proof

• Coaches team and oversees demonstrations (e.g., architectural design sessions [ADS], proof of concept [POC] sessions) of solutions and position solutions against competitors through initial engagements. Ensures demonstrations enable customers to identify and resolve technical issues with clear criteria and next steps that guarantee deployment of Microsoft technology. Guides team on Microsoft standards on demonstrations to provide feedback to partners.
• Applies sales methodologies (e.g., catalyst, challenger sales) and coaches sales team in guiding customers through digital transformation across solution areas and leveraging insights to align new or changing technology to customer business needs.
• Coaches team to leverage Microsoft technology in innovative ways to meet customer needs. Supports team in coordinating with stakeholders to develop solutions for complex sales scenarios.
• Identifies new trends and needs, and identifies ideas that can be transformed into applications of solutions that benefit customers/partners, serving as the voice of the customer (VOC) to Microsoft.

Technical Leadership

• Enables and empowers team to develop technical expertise and provide technical insights to internal teams.
• Plans, conducts, or coaches team to conduct one-to-many events (e.g., workshops, Webinars) to present and educate customers and colleagues on the capabilities and benefits of using specific Microsoft solutions/products.

Other

• Embody our culture and values

Employers have access to artificial intelligence language tools (“AI”) that help generate and enhance job descriptions and AI may have been used to create this description. The position description has been reviewed for accuracy and Dice believes it to correctly reflect the job opportunity.