Technology Specialist Digital and Application Innovation

Overview
Are you curious and passionate about the area of digital applications, cloud-native platforms, software development and the latest AI technologies? Are you ready to tackle complex challenges in a dynamic environment and empower customers to modernize and transform their application landscape? If so, we invite you to join our team as a Technology Specialist in Azure Digital & Application Innovation at Microsoft. Our team’s mission is to drive innovation and make a meaningful impact for our customers through cutting-edge digital solutions and innovative applications. In an era where AI and digital technologies play a central role in shaping industries and driving transformative changes, we are at the forefront of pioneering technologies and strategies.

As a Technology Specialist (TS) your role is to understand our customers’ technical and business challenges, determine the necessary technology strategy, demonstrating and proving the value of Microsoft Azure solutions to win customers’ technical decisions. You’ll be closely working with Solution Sales Specialists to drive customer engagements. Collaboration is key and a virtual team of account management, technical and consulting resources within Microsoft and our partner ecosystem will support you to educate your customers at a technical level, demonstrate, prove our Azure solutions, and deliver value for our customers.

Your workweek will be dynamic, with 70% focused on engaging with customers including planning, preparation, customer meetings (including travel), technical presentations, demos, and workshops. The remaining 30% will be dedicated to continuously enhancing your technical expertise, staying abreast of industry trends, and understanding the competitive landscape in the realm of digital applications and innovation, as well as internal meetings for sales alignment and pipeline management.

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As a team, we embrace a growth mindset, foster innovation, and collaborate to realize shared goals. Upholding values of respect, integrity, and accountability, we create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities
What You Do:

Domain Expertise:

• Develops and maintains advanced to expert level technical expertise in Microsoft Azure platform and Digital & Application Innovation products, including one or more of the following.
  • Cloud-native platform technology like Azure App Service, Azure Kubernetes Services and Azure Container Apps
  • Development tool stack like GitHub Enterprise, Azure DevOps and Azure DevBox
  • Cloud integration services like Azure API Management and serverless technologies like Logic Apps and Functions
  • AI App platform technology and design, like Azure OpenAI, LLMs, Azure AI Services, Copilot and Semantic Kernel.

Scale Customer Engagements and Drive Technical Decisions:

• Act as trusted technical advisor in their field of cloud-native application development and application modernization.
• Anticipates customer needs and uses knowledge of customer context and domain expertise to build credible, comprehensive and compelling solution designs.
• Ensures technical wins for core Azure Digital & Application Innovation technologies by independently driving technical discussions with customers. Improves customer interactions and products through feedback and observation.
• Engages other resources across Microsoft and especially Azure, leveraging basic resource knowledge, for key areas of technology as needed to overcome technical blockers on assigned technology set.

Leverage Partner Ecosystem:

• Engages in partner sell-with scenarios by collaborating with partners to carry out technical engagement activities and acting as a source of trusted partner knowledge.
• Supports partner technical capacity by identifying resources to scale and aligning with Microsoft training offerings.

Build Strategy:

• Share competitive insights from customer sessions with colleagues and escalate competitive situations to influence compete strategies and product development.
• Provides strategic, technical input based on Microsoft capability at the account level to contribute to strategy development.
• Collaborates closely with Solution Sales Specialists for Azure Digital & Application Innovation to identify and progress opportunities on customer and industry level.
• Tailors Microsoft messaging to audience and captures and shares customer feedback using knowledge of specific Microsoft solutions and their context in a competitive landscape.

Solution Design and Proof:

• Demonstrates and oversees demonstrations (e.g., architectural design sessions, proof of concept [POC] sessions, RFI/RFPs) of solutions based on Digital & Application Innovation product portfolio. Leverages broader Microsoft partner/customer teams as needed to prove product capabilities and integration into customer environment.
• Presents and applies reference architectures to partners or customers for their technology sets.
• Expands awareness of and begins practicing digital transformation sales methodologies (e.g., challenger sales).

Education:

• Consumes and leverages readiness materials to expand domain knowledge and practices expertise by communicating with customers, partners, and senior colleagues to expand knowledge of architecture.
• Demonstrates new and updated products to increase internal virtual teams' product understanding.
• Participates as a member in the Microsoft tech community, attends community calls, sessions, hackathons, etc., and acts as a resource for their technology area.

Qualifications
Required/Minimum Qualifications:

• Good Technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
• Knowledge of cloud-native platform technology and cloud application design patterns; Knowledge of industry standards for cloud architecture designs and integration of on-premises and hybrid environments; knowledge of developer tools, cloud and hybrid/on-premise development landscape and processes

Additional or Preferred Qualifications:

• A few years hands-on experience with cloud application development leveraging major cloud technology provider; preferably with experience of modernizing on-premise environments to hybrid and cloud by applying industry standards and best-practices
• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field
• Knowledge AND/OR experience with competitive cloud solution provider technology
• Knowledge AND/OR experience with integration service technology AND/OR low code/no code development platforms AND/OR Machine Learning and AI technology AND/OR serverless services

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. 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.

Work site
Up to 50% work from home