Cloud Solution Architect - Data & AI

We are looking for an experienced Data & AI Solution Architect with deep database expertise to join our Customer Success team. The role will focus on helping strategic enterprise customers design, modernise, optimise and operate highly available, secure and resilient database platforms on Microsoft Azure.

The ideal candidate will bring strong hands-on experience across SQL Server, Azure SQL and enterprise database environments, with the ability to go beyond architecture and help customers diagnose complex database issues, optimise workload performance and improve the availability and operational health of business-critical database platforms.

While the role sits within Data & AI, the primary requirement for our team is deep database architecture and engineering capability, complementing our existing Data & Analytics expertise.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and technical engagements for mission-critical database workloads across Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on Azure VMs.
• Assess existing customer database estates and develop migration, modernisation and optimisation strategies.
• Provide deep technical guidance on database performance tuning, including query performance, indexing, execution plans, resource utilisation, configuration and workload optimisation.
• Diagnose complex production database performance and reliability issues and provide actionable recommendations.
• Advise customers on database and cluster architecture, configuration, scaling, capacity planning and operational best practices.
• Design high availability and disaster recovery architectures aligned with customer business continuity requirements.
• Review and optimise database environments for performance, reliability, security and cost.
• Support customers with SQL Server and Azure SQL migrations, upgrades and platform modernisation.
• Provide technical leadership for database resiliency, backup, recovery, failover and business-critical workload scenarios.
• Evaluate workload requirements and recommend the appropriate Azure database deployment model.
• Provide architectural guidance across other Azure database technologies, including Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Cosmos DB, where required.
• Lead technical workshops, architecture reviews, health assessments and troubleshooting sessions with customer database, infrastructure and application teams.
• Work across customer application and infrastructure architectures to identify upstream or downstream dependencies affecting database performance.
• Partner with Microsoft engineering, support and specialist teams to resolve complex customer database challenges.
• Help customers establish an AI-ready operational data foundation, connecting modern database platforms with emerging AI use cases where relevant.

Qualifications

Core Database Expertise

• Deep hands-on experience with Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL technologies.
• Strong expertise in database architecture, administration, optimisation and troubleshooting.
• Proven experience with SQL performance tuning, including query optimisation, indexing strategies, execution-plan analysis and resource bottleneck investigation.
• Experience diagnosing CPU, memory, I/O, locking, blocking, concurrency and database performance issues.
• Strong understanding of database configuration, workload management, scaling and capacity planning.
• Experience managing and optimising highly available or clustered database environments.
• Strong knowledge of high availability, disaster recovery, backup/recovery and failover architectures.
• Hands-on experience with SQL Server migration and modernisation to Azure.
• Strong understanding of Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on Azure VMs and the architectural considerations for choosing between them.
• Understanding of database security, identity, networking, encryption, monitoring and operational controls.

Broader Technical Expertise

• Working knowledge of PostgreSQL and other Azure database technologies is highly desirable.
• Understanding of Azure infrastructure, networking, storage, monitoring and security as they relate to enterprise database workloads.
• Ability to understand application architectures and identify how application behaviour impacts underlying database performance.
• Understanding of modern Data & AI architectures and how operational database platforms provide the trusted data foundation for enterprise AI workloads.
• AI fluency and ability to engage customers on how database modernisation supports their broader AI strategy.

Customer & Architecture Skills

• Proven experience leading complex technical engagements with enterprise customers.
• Ability to move between architecture-level discussions and deep technical troubleshooting.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to diagnose complex production issues across application, database and infrastructure layers.
• Ability to translate technical findings into pragmatic architecture and operational recommendations.
• Strong communication, presentation and technical whiteboarding skills.
• Comfortable engaging with DBAs, application developers, platform engineers, enterprise architects and senior technology stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300) or equivalent demonstrated expertise.
• Relevant Azure architecture certifications are desirable.
• Experience supporting large, complex and regulated enterprise environments.
• Experience with mission-critical workloads requiring demanding performance, availability, scalability and recovery objectives.
• Experience modernising large on-premises SQL Server estates to Azure.
• Experience performing database health assessments, performance reviews and production optimisation.

Ideal Candidate Profile

We are specifically looking for someone who can walk into a complex customer database environment and confidently answer:

Why is the database slow? Where is the bottleneck? How should we tune it? Is the database or cluster configured correctly? Will it scale? Is the HA/DR design sufficient? And what should the customer modernise on Azure?

The successful candidate should combine deep DBA/database engineering expertise with cloud architecture skills, while having enough Data & AI fluency to connect database modernisation to the customer's broader AI strategy.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

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.