Azure Infrastructure Specialist for the Professional Services Industry

Contenuto del lavoro

Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centred on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day.

The Azure Infrastructure Specialist team works with Enterprise customers to define and realize their digital transformation journey through cloud computing. A core competency of the role is to advance the engagement process to achieve/exceed Azure Infrastructure consumption targets for related workloads in your assigned accounts.

The Professional Services Industry is transforming towards new digital businesses and revenue streams, for example establishing their own SaaS business models. The Azure Infrastructure Specialist role for customers in this vertical is at the leading edge of this digital transformation, supporting our customers from building this digital vision to realizing it with the relevant IT services and helping them on their migration and modernization journey.

We are looking for a strong sales character enriched with a technical skillset to complement Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud team for the Professional Services Industry in Germany: Within the Enterprise segment, this role takes responsibility and ownership for Solution Sales of the Azure Cloud Platform focused on Apps & Infrastructurefor a portfolio of services companies and independent software vendors. We are looking for an entrepreneurial mindset who brings technical expertise, industry experience and passion to achieve more within a strong team! The ideal candidate is open minded and approaches the role with a strong mix of strategic sales experience as well as a go-doer mentality.

This is a senior role that is operating at a strategic level with customers (line of business and IT). The ideal candidate has a deep understanding of the industry’s business opportunities and challenges across the value chain and is able to map how Microsoft cloud technology can address these opportunities and challenges.

You bring or will develop and maintain technical expertise on Azure infrastructure and application workloads. You are able to identify and drive projects, build a compelling commercial business case, and bring consumption projects to production. This role is a subject matter expert for capabilities of the Azure platformas well as the business models and processes within the professional services industry and the digital transformation happening today and tomorrow. The role is positioned within a broader account team, brings technical expertise, and creates partnerships within our ecosystem.

The Azure Specialist is a trusted advisor with relationships to key customer business and IT decision-makers, helping them to build the roadmap for their digital transformation change based on our technology. Together with other experts at Microsoft and our partner companies, this role contributes to the overall success of our cloud platform business.

The role Azure Infrastructure Specialist is focused on landing and influencing the Microsoft Azure apps, infrastructure, and hybrid datacenter go-to-market strategies as well as migration and modernization strategy while working closely with Microsoft’s partners (ISV, SI, Consulting Services, etc.). The role delivers growth of Azure consumption while positioning customer specific answers to solve challenges and digitally transform their business and service models.

Responsibilities

• You work with your customers on developing new Azure migration and modernization consumption engagements which align to the customer’s technical and business strategy. You work with partners and others at Microsoft. You use our tools and targeted account lists to identify and engage prioritized customers. You will be required to be disciplined in business-management, forecasting, and reporting and build a strong and active business network.
• You are a key technical leader with an outstanding cloud economic knowledge. Your are a trusted advisor and influencer in shaping your customers’ decisions to commit and adopt Microsoft Azure and infrastructure solutions. You win the customers’ technical and business decision for consumption projects and usage scenarios through tailored messaging, leading commercial as well as the technical discussions, and aligning the appropriate solutions partners, programs, and resources to guide them in decision making and consumption plans. You will lead standard technical demonstrations of Azure solutions to explain and prove the capabilities of Microsoft Azure relative to the customers business and technical objectives. These efforts will accrue to developing with your Cloud Solution Architect counterparts the minimum viable product (MVP) solutions which will accelerate deployment to Azure with support of other technical roles including Azure partners.
• You are influencing the Microsoft Azure Infrastructure go-to-market strategies by providing feedback to sales, marketing, and engineering on current and future product requirements and sales blockers. You will be recognized for sharing, learning, and driving work that results in business impact for customers, partners and Microsoft. We encourage thought leadership, and we encourage all our employees to continuously maintain and enhance their technical, business value, sales, professional skills and competitive readiness. You will therefore be required to attain and maintain required certifications.
  

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 junior 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.
  

Other

• Embody our culture and values
  

Qualifications

• Demonstrable experience in consulting / selling to IT and business stakeholders.
• Background of industry specialized or solution sales or consulting position within an IT company or as cross-entry from a professional services / independent software vendor company.
• Experience in cloud / hybrid apps and infrastructure with strong technical skills:
• Understanding of Microsoft Azure Cloud platform (esp. Azure Apps & Infrastructure solutions and governance) OR other cloud platforms.
• Ability to lead technical sessions to drive solution discussions,
• Ability to lead technical demonstrations of relevant Azure infrastructure solutions.
• Extensive successful sales track record incl. relevant sales results:
• Proven track record of effective territory/account management: planning and analysis, opportunity qualification and creation, stakeholder and executive communication, services/partner engagement, opportunity management, pipeline management, leading commercial discussions, building a strong (cloud economics) business case and deal negotiation.
• Experience and expertise 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.
• Ability to solve customer problems through cloud technologies.
• Personal network to stakeholders in the professional services and/or independent software vendor industry as well as to relevant cloud / industry partners or proven track record of successfully establishing and nurturing a network with key decision makers at customers.
• Hunter and go-doer mentality as well as experience and proven success with strategic sales approaches.
• Experience in orchestrating and influencing virtual teams to pursue sales opportunities and lead v-teams through influence.
• Knowledge of enterprise software solutions and cloud and datacenter infrastructure competitor landscape.
• Fluent German and English is mandatory.
  

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Demonstrable technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND experience of technology-related sales or account management.
  

Additional Or Preferred Qualifications

• Substantail technology-related sales or account management experience.
• OR Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, or related field AND substantial technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Master’s Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND technology-related sales or account management experience.
• Demonstrable solution or services sales experience.
  

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.

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