Senior Specialist - Cloud & AI Platforms

Microsoft’s Azure Specialist team sets the sales strategy for the Enterprise business within the country, leads pre-sales conversations with customers across different industries and works with stakeholders to grow the Azure business faster than market. The Azure Specialist team, which is part of the Solutions Team Unit (STU), works closely with other Microsoft teams such as the Account team, the customer Success team, with partners, and with the Industry Solutions Delivery team, to ensure those solutions meet our customers’ needs and we build our business to scale with customers.

The Azure Solution Sales Specialist will bring deep industry relevance across the Oil and Energy value chain, including upstream, midstream, downstream, energy trading, sustainability, operational efficiency, AI, data modernization, infrastructure modernization, and secure cloud transformation.

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

Sales Execution

• Owns Azure sales strategy and execution for a strategic Oil / Energy account, including account planning, forecasting, pipeline development, and consumption growth.

• Builds trusted C-level and senior stakeholder relationships across business, IT, digital, operations, engineering, and sustainability functions.

• Brings Oil / Energy industry insights into customer conversations, translating Azure capabilities into measurable business value.

• Manages the end-to-end business for a strategic account across the organization, leading forecasting and developing a portfolio and territory plan to drive intentional selling with on-strategy engagements in high-propensity accounts. Finally, mentors other team members to support their growth and development.

• Brings impactful industry insights into customer engagements and closes deals with customers. Acts as a thought leader across solution areas to advise customers across business functions on digital transformation. Leads virtual transformational shifts to drive deployment and create business value for customers. Leads partner integration into account/territory planning and customer engagements. Provides thought leadership.

• Acts as a subject matter expert, and leverages and shares competitor knowledge across solution areas to inform decisions on pursuit or withdrawal. Mentors others and develops strategies for best practice sharing across subsidiaries. Additionally, coaches others on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and decreasing dissatisfaction by establishing recovery action plans to improve clients' overall experience.

• Drives consumption and grow business with existing strategic customers by initiating conversations, guiding others on demos or quotes, and collaboration 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. Drives advanced workloads and usage.

Scaling & Collaboration

• Orchestrates with team members on conducting personal campaigns to discover new opportunities and generate new leads. Leads conversations with strategic/high-potential customers along with account teams or partners. Facilitates the account team unit (ATU) and/or other Specialist Team Unit (STU) members to build pipeline in collaboration with partners and services. Guides others on social selling. Applies Microsoft's sales process (MSP) to determine the quality of the opportunity and whether to proceed, and educate the customers on how to best address their needs.

• Leads the planning and execution on opportunities with resources and partners to cross-sell and up-sell. Identifies, leverages, and coordinates partners and resources across solution areas. Validates partner solution relevance for customers. Provides input and feedback to Enterprise Partner Solutions (EPS) team on developing partner strategies and connects the partner ecosystems to scale business results.

• Leads the sales orchestration with internal stakeholders and partners (e.g., Enterprise Operating Unit). Applies a holistic approach to build network across territories. Positions opportunities to promote collaboration and participation.

• 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.

• Posts information or speaks at external events, drives conversations with prospective customers/partners as a thought leader across solution areas

Technical Expertise

• Acts as a Trusted advisor and uses proactive effort to find and understand customers’ pain points and work with partners to design and offer solutions that support the business case

• Owns pre-sales discussions with customers leveraging processes and tools, demos, and programs using consultative sales methodology and sufficient technical expertise to influence the customer vision; establish rules of engagement (e.g., role boundaries, handoff strategies) for extended teams.

• Collaborates with Microsoft Solution Engineers and Partners to build a technical strategy, map the agreed customer vision into a strategy, resolve concerns, preventing and removing technical blockers, and validating a strong business case for investment and translate technology complexity into business impact. Work with the customer, account team, and partners to orchestrate a roadmap for implementation guiding the customer to choose the best Microsoft Analytics, Data, AI, Apps and Infrastructure platform

• Works with Microsoft’s ISD organizations and partners to design the solution for customers using your orchestration capabilities and solution knowledge to arrive at an architectural approach and deployment services to win a customer’s business & technical decision that meet the customer’s needs; drive proof of concepts (POCs)/Pilots to create momentum for MVPs, infusing key Microsoft AI technologies where appropriate and being technically proficient to do POC with hands-on-skills.

• Cross collaborates across AI, and Apps Innovation, AI Workforce, AI Business Process and Security teams to drive AI Design Wins and support the customer AI transformation inclusive of AI Applications and data foundation. Support the creation of new pipeline in collaboration with the Account team and Microsoft partners.

• Acts as the Voice of Customer to share insights and best practices with Global Black Belt and Engineering, to remove key blockers and drive product improvements.

• Maintains and grows expertise in Microsoft Azure services including AI technologies (Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Services, and Azure ML and Model Catalog) and relevant Analytics, Data warehousing, Data Engineering, Data Science, and AI while keeping up to date with market trends and competitive insights

Sales Excellence

• Engages with internal and external stakeholders on business planning, Rhythm of Business (ROB) meetings to review and plan for strategic accounts across territories.

• Collaborates with extended sales team, partners, and marketing to lead business analysis (e.g., whitespace analysis, identify industry trends) to pursue high-potential customers and develop a target list of potential business. Acts as a thought leader and clears opinions and perspectives from business analysis.

• Manages the end-to-end business for strategic accounts across the organization. Leads forecasting for accounts and develops a portfolio and territory plan to drive intentional selling with on-strategy engagements in high propensity accounts. Mentors less experienced team members.

• Completes required training and obtains relevant product and role certifications aligned to the role and workload/industry. Proactively seeks training, including information that adds to the understanding of customers' business, and shares it with team members.

Qualifications

• 10+ years technology-related pre-sales and / or cloud consulting experience in Data, AI, Infrastructure, Applications

• Experience in financial services industries and large multinational cloud deployments is high desirable

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Technology, and / or Business Administration

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.