Microsoft Canada Hiring for Digital and App Innovation Cloud Solutions Architect Manager at Toronto, ON Full Time

We are looking for a highly motivated and passionate leader to manage and develop a team of Application Innovation Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) and Customer Engineers (CE) to drive digital transformation through tech intensity at scale for global customers. This is a customer-facing role, managing the team that is the face of overall technical relationship and strategy between the customer and Microsoft. Your team will own the Application Modernization and Innovation customer engagements, including architecture design, implementation, and production. The ideal candidate will have experience in building teams of customer-facing roles with technical expertise in application development, have some experience leading sales engineers and have a passion for the future of application innovation and it’s ability to impact business transformation.

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.

Understanding Customer

Provides support for the team in gathering, evaluating, and leveraging industry trends (customer industry verticals, information technology [IT] industry) and customer/partner technical insights. Holds teams accountable for mapping architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business goals. Leverages prior work, customer/partner insights, industry trends, and shares insights with the team to apply.

Supports the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner through escalation, acceleration, and an additional emphasis of feedback, gaps, blockers, insights, resources, etc.. looks across multiple customers/partners for opportunities to consolidate and prioritize items across the business.

Architecture Design and Deployment

Holds teams accountable for leveraging existing architecture approaches to achieve Microsoft’s agreed commitments to the customer/partner and develops new solutions to scale across multiple customers/partners.

Ensures architects are equipped with the capabilities and means to deliver architectural demonstrations while taking into account complex technical requirements and issues (e.g., involving great length or tenacity to resolve) and various technical strategies being proposed. provides coaching to allow architects to scale solutions.

Applies technical, industry, and enterprise knowledge across multiple, large architecture projects to meet strategic and tactical business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified technical and organizational constraints. guides team to shape and enhance customers’ requirements.

Leads customer/partner projects that implement technical architecture(s) to enable a breadth of highly advanced and complex solutions. Provides thought leadership for related business strategy development and guides architect team in supporting/driving the customer/partner throughout pre-sales and/or implementation.

Creates a culture and clarity around technical insights and escalations, anticipates and removes blockers related to the customer/partner business and/or internal politics to remove technical blockers through regular technical reviews and check ins, and ensures architecture implementations move forward. Identifies patterns in blockers across business areas or a territory. Ensures that non-technical issues are routed and removed by the appropriate party.

Sets expectations for the team around methodology and governance, and ensures that team identifies, communicates, and minimizes business and technical risks (e.g. Well-Architected Framework, Enterprise Scale Landing Zone, Cloud Adoption Framework). Defines customer/partner conditions of success, adheres to quality assurance, and calculates risks whilst designing and/or delivering solutions.

Practice Development

Connects gaps and patterns across business and technology areas, and drives changes and improvements to existing intellectual property (IP), technologies, and/or processes that enable solutions to scale across customers. drives sales and consumption, as well as IP re-use and best practice sharing. Develops and contributes to the company stock of structured frameworks and methodologies.

Trusted Advisor

Develops and expands existing impactful relationships with customer, C-level technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders (to the extent that the customer/partner will call for consultation without being prompted). Provides direction to TDMs and builds the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs).

Coaches the team to create and sustains constructive tension and trust with customers/partners by respectfully challenging their decisions and/or areas where they might do more, explaining cost impacts, project context, business value, etc., and encouraging them to consider alternative architectures and approaches.

Provides their team with a holistic perspective of customer/partner challenges, industry trends, and competitor architectures to allow team members to engage with customers/partners, demonstrate Microsoft’s value, and develop counter strategy.

Thought Leadership

Fosters a community sharing of stories and leverages of pre-existing resources by encouraging and empowering the team to share learnings by establishing a cadence (e.g., internal technical brainstorming calls, presenting latest challenges in staff meetings) to calibrate on challenges and trends that impact the team across the subsidiary level. Holds teams accountable for sharing insights with virtual team members to inform the direction they take with customers/partners.

Participates in external architect community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, Webcasts, blogs, hackathons) and shares learnings with internal team. Acts a mentor to junior colleagues by educating them on technical and non-technical concepts and sharing best practices. Demonstrates deep industry knowledge and drives recognition for Microsoft solutions through presentations and engagements with external audiences.

Customer Usage

Manages the business and coaches Cloud Solution Architects (CSAs) to lead architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization across multiple applications for the customer, resulting in production deployment application and increased customer business value. Leads initiatives to ensure that the customer’s environment and applications are well-architected. Acts as an industry expert to serve as a player/coach for CSAs.

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.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 12+ 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 8+ years experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or cloud/infrastructure technologies

OR equivalent experience.

6+ years technical sales or customer success experience.

2+ years project management experience.

3+ years people management experience, including managing consultant practice managers, technical sales managers, and/or technical architect managers.

Considering a Career with Microsoft Canada? At Microsoft Canada, people are the source of our energy. The people at Microsoft Canada are creative, from all types of backgrounds, bringing passion and new ideas, meeting challenges, and realizing their potential. Our benefits and resources are designed to keep our most important asset – our employees – healthy, happy and equipped with the resources they need to be successful and realize their full potential. Microsoft Canada provides a flexible work environment, with career advancement potential and most importantly, the opportunity to make a difference.

As a Microsoft employee you have the opportunity to participate in the following programs:

Stock Awards & Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Registered Retirement Savings Plan

Employee Software Purchase Program

Fitness Membership & Subsidy

I Volunteer (5 Paid Volunteer Days)

Employee Assistance Program And so much more…

At Microsoft, we share a passion for technology, customers and our partners. We aspire to be more than just a good company- we aspire to be a great company. What will make us great is our commitment to our mission of enabling people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer and supports workforce diversity.

Microsoft is committed to accommodating applicants with disabilities up to the point of undue hardship during the recruitment, assessment and selection process. Please notify Microsoft if you require accommodation in respect of the materials or procedures used at any time during this process. If you require accommodation Microsoft will work with you to determine how to meet your need.

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