Solution Specialist - Azure Apps & Infrastructure

Job content

Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be, and take their careers to levels they can’t achieve anywhere else. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness, and sky’s-the-limit thinking -- a cloud-enabled world.

Microsoft also has a longstanding commitment to global corporate philanthropy. Since 2016, we have donated more than $2.5 billion in cash grants, software, hardware and cloud technology to hundreds of thousands of nonprofits and helped 90,000 move to the cloud. In September 2017 we launched Tech for Social Impact (TSI), powered by a sustainable social model where profits are reinvested into expanding support for nonprofits. The TSI team is dedicated to making world-class cloud technology accessible and affordable, so that nonprofits can drive even greater impact.

To scale our impact across the nonprofit community the company is investing in the TSI Group. This organization will bring together our donation and grants programs, commercial sales efforts and partner ecosystem to empower nonprofits globally to address the world’s most pressing needs. This will include leading the “Digital Transformation for Social Impact” go-to-market, working with nonprofits to maximize their social impact through the power of Microsoft platforms. Profits generated from this business will be reapplied to scaling operations and to support cash donations to high impact social projects. Fueling all of this new work and investment is the aim to empower every nonprofit to do their best work to create inclusive and enduring positive impact throughout our communities.

This role will be working with the largest nonprofits in Europe.

To learn more about Microsoft’s mission, please visit: https://careers.microsoft.com/mission-culture

Check out all our products at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us

Responsibilities

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

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 4+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience.
• Enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, Security, migrations, and technology management. Subject matter expertise in one or more of the following: 
• Datacenter Management, Automation and operational Excellence
• Azure Infrastructure ROI (Return on Investments) and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis
• Application development platforms on public clouds and/or Azure in development languages such as Java, JavaScript, Python, PHP, C#, Node.JS targeting Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, public clouds or Azure.
• Scalable architectures using Azure App Service, API management, serverless technologies, container orchestration (e.g.  AKS, Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, Pivotal Cloud Foundry etc.), microservice frameworks etc.
• Understanding of Microsoft Azure and Server products and/or complementing solutions. The position requires the ability to articulate and present the business value of Microsoft’s solutions and have a firm understanding of Microsoft’s strategies and products relative to major Microsoft competitors
• Certifications; Azure Fundamentals and Azure Admin Associate or Architect certifications required
  

Additional Or Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience.
• OR Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, or related field AND 6+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Master’s Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND 3+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience.
• 4+ years of solution or services sales experience.
  

How You Do It

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Account Management
• Business Acumen
• Business Knowledge
• Business Relationship Management
• Challenger Mindset
• Change Management
• Competitive Intelligence
• Conflict Resolution
• Consultative Selling
• Creativity
• Decision Making
• English Language Proficiency
• Executive Relationships
• Financial Analysis
• Forecasting
• Executive Relationships
• Microsoft Consulting Services
• Microsoft Product Knowledge
• Microsoft Support Services
• Negotiation
• Operational Excellence
• Opportunity/Deal Orchestration
• Presentations
• Sales Strategy
• Sell-With Partners
• Storytelling
• Technical Communication
• Technical Sales
• Technical Solutions
• Technology Industry Knowledge
• Trusted Technical Advisor
• Written Communication
  

Internal Use Only: Culture and Values

• Learn more about Microsoft’s Culture: Culture - Home (sharepoint.com)
• Learn more about Microsoft Values: Values - Home (sharepoint.com)
  

Language skills: English fluent, Dutch speaking preferred

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.