Cloud Solution Architect - AI Apps - Full-time LOA backfill

Overview With over 17,000 employees worldwide, the mission of the Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers achieve their business outcomes faster with technology that does more. We are looking for a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) who is passionate about driving our customers’ application innovation & AI transformation on the Microsoft platform. As part of this role, you will be responsible for technical customer engagements, working with the most challenging and exciting projects within Microsoft Azure and GitHub customer base. This customer-facing position is a hands-on technical role spanning across design, build, and operations with a focus on issue resolution to remove customer technical obstacles and adoption challenges. You will work with customers to lead deep technical architecture discussions and engage with senior customer executives, enterprise architects, platform engineers and developers. You will collaborate with a variety of internal and external teams to develop pilots and oversee implementation projects, ensuring technical blockers are removed on adoption. 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.

Responsibilities

• Develop a deep understanding of customers’ business and IT objectives, focusing on platform engineering, cloud application development, and the adoption of Generative and Agentic AI.
• Serve as the customer’s advocate by channeling feedback to engineering teams, analyzing usage and application patterns, and accelerating solution delivery through architectural reviews, proof of concepts, MVPs, and environment setup.
• Enhance customer skills by recommending or delivering technical discussions, workshops, and cloud readiness activities, ensuring deployed solutions meet standards for performance, security, scalability, maintainability, and reliability.
• Drive growth in cloud and support consumption by identifying opportunities to improve customer success outcomes, helping customers maximize their Microsoft investments, and resolving technical blockers through subject matter expertise and escalation processes.
• Build and nurture customer and partner relationships, proactively identifying, escalating, and resolving technical challenges to accelerate solution adoption. Leverage knowledge of Microsoft and competitor products to uncover growth opportunities based on customer needs.
• Continuously learn and adopt new technologies and services aligned with customer requirements and cloud development trends. Stay up to date with Azure, AI, and GitHub capabilities, and maintain proficiency in enterprise languages such as .NET, Python, Java, JavaScript/Node.js, and related frameworks.
• Share strategic technical insights with internal teams and communities, participate in external technical events (conferences, seminars, meetups, webcasts, blogs, hackathons), and contribute ideas for improving intellectual property, technologies, and processes to promote IP reuse, best practices, and accelerated consumption.
• Articulate the business value of proposed solutions, plans, and risks to stakeholders and decision makers, persuading and informing based on factual alignment with organizational goals and strategy.
• Establish trusted advisor relationships with stakeholders by understanding customer needs and technologies, fostering deep engagement with both technical and business decision makers.
• Demonstrate situational fluency by interpreting verbal and non-verbal cues to effectively “read the room.”
• Practice insightful listening by asking probing questions to uncover customer needs, issues, business environment, and drivers, going beyond stated requirements.
• Bring enterprise-scale technical experience in cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture design, migrations, and technology management.
• Possess broad technical expertise in foundational cloud security, infrastructure, AI, and architecture design, with subject matter depth in areas such as:
• Application development platforms on public clouds and/or Azure using languages like Java, JavaScript, Python, PHP, .NET, C#, Node.js.
• Scalable architectures leveraging Azure App Service, API management, serverless technologies, container orchestration (AKS, Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift), and microservice frameworks.
• Software development practices including DevOps and CI/CD toolchains (GitHub, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, Spinnaker).
• Data-specific expertise in Azure SQL Data (IaaS/PaaS), cloud migrations, open-source databases, cloud-scale analytics, data governance, and Azure Open AI.
• Demonstrate experience in creating Proof of Concepts (PoCs) and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) that lead to production deployments.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications (RQs)

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 2+ 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)

• 2+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
• 2+ years experience working on technical projects.
• Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications).
• Technical experience and knowledge in Enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, and technology management. Proficient in .Net, Java, JavaScript/Node.js or Python development languages and related frameworks.

This role provides coverage for an employee currently on a leave of absence and is expected to continue until the employee returns. The employee is currently expected to return in or around October 2027, although this timing may change. While we remain fully committed to your career development at Microsoft, we cannot commit to continued placement in this specific role beyond the assignment. Cloud Solution Architecture IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across Canada is CAD $69,600 - CAD $132,500 per year. Find additional pay information here: [ Cloud Solution Architecture IC3 - L'échelle salariale de base typique pour ce rôle dans l'ensemble du Canada est de 69,600 $ CAD à 132,500 $ CAD par année. Pour plus d'information au sujet de la rémunération, veuillez cliquer ici: [ Ce poste sera ouvert pendant au moins cinq jours et les candidatures seront acceptées de façon continue jusqu’à ce que le poste soit pourvu. This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. --- Microsoft est un employeur offrant l’égalité d’accès à l’emploi. Tous les candidats qualifiés seront pris en considération pour l’emploi, sans égard à l’âge, à l’ascendance, à la citoyenneté, à la couleur, aux congés médicaux ou familiaux, à l’identité ou à l’expression de genre, aux renseignements génétiques, à l’état d’immigration, à l’état matrimonial, à l’état de santé, à l’origine nationale, à un éventuel handicap physique ou mental, à l’affiliation politique, au statut de vétéran protégé ou au statut militaire, à la race, à l’ethnie, à la religion, au sexe (y compris la grossesse), à l’orientation sexuelle ou à toute autre caractéristique protégée par les lois, ordonnances et règlements locaux applicables. Si vous avez besoin d’aide avec des accommodements religieux et/ou d’un accommodement raisonnable en raison d’un handicap pendant le processus de candidature, apprenez-en plus sur la [ demande d’accommodement. ]( Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. 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 with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about [ requesting accommodations. ](