Cloud Solution Architect

Proactively acts as the voice of the customer/partner and internal communities leveraging relevant insights from feedback tools and systems. Proactively identifies and/or translates customer/partner problems into industry solutions. Drives self and guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Anticipates, identifies, escalates, and mitigates blockers using appropriate tools. Delivers solutions in line with company methodologies, ensuring proven practices and patterns are followed. Proactively identifies and anticipates new cross-solution opportunities for Consumption, Usage & Unified expansion at scale. Operates according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record. Leverages market insights and demand signals. Leads, mentors, and may assemble virtual teams using knowledge of Microsoft architectures and their context in the competitive landscape. Proactively identifies and anticipates gaps that enable solutions to scale across customers.

We're looking for a technically strong, customer-focused Infrastructure Cloud Solution Architect to join our team. This role is ideal for someone with deep experience in financial services—particularly banking, superannuation, and insurance—and a passion for designing resilient, secure, and scalable cloud solutions.

• Business Knowledge: Operates according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record (e.g., pipeline updates, time tracking). Orchestrates and collaborates across Microsoft and customer/partner teams through on-strategy delivery to achieve customer/partner objectives and increase customer/partner satisfaction. Proactively anticipates and manages business and technical risks, adapts methodology and applies governance principles to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. Executes work in compliance with industry and Microsoft guidelines and procedures. Continuously prioritizes among competing demands in their work and identifies where impact occurs with customers, ensuring alignment with business priorities and goals.
  
  Customer Centricity: Drives self and guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Drives the realization of customer/partner conditions of success by leveraging an understanding of customer goals. Anticipates, addresses, and leads customer confidence calls to resolve customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs, and creates and executes strategies to improve customer experience, value realization, and acceleration of transformation.
  
• Technical Leadership: Leads, mentors, and may assemble virtual teams (v-teams) around technologies and customer/partner challenges, sharing ideas, insights, and strategic, technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger v-team across Microsoft using knowledge of Microsoft architectures and their context in the competitive landscape. Demonstrates deep industry knowledge and drives recognition for Microsoft solutions by leading presentations and engagements with external and internal audiences (e.g., Tech Connect, Build, Ignite) Contributes to and collaborates on intellectual property (IP) and proactively identifies patterns where no IP exists (e.g., CoPilot and AI scenarios) to help build scalable and repeatable models. Participates in and leads external technical and non-technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, webcasts, blogs, hackathons) that elevate the Microsoft brand and shares learnings across internal teams. 
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• Understand and map customer requirements to Microsoft's offerings, translating business needs into tailored technical solutions that drive satisfaction and success.
• Design and implement cloud architectures that are secure, resilient, and optimised for performance and cost.
• Apply reference architectures and patterns across a range of solutions including advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, big data, IoT, modern applications, and data platform modernisation.
• Develop technical solutions that are customised to customer needs, leveraging proven practices and Microsoft technologies.
• Stay ahead of industry trends, bringing insights into hardware, software, and services that shape the future of infrastructure and cloud transformation.

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 7+ 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.

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 12+ 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 Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 8+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
• 6+ years experience leading technical projects.
• Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications).

As a Cloud Solution Architect, you will lead the design and delivery of secure, resilient, and scalable infrastructure solutions on Microsoft Azure. You will work closely with customers, partners, and internal teams to drive business outcomes, accelerate cloud adoption, and ensure operational excellence. We're looking for someone with deep expertise across the following areas:

• Azure Data Services: Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL Database, Azure Databricks, Azure Cosmos DB
• Data Warehousing & Lakehouse Architectures: Design and implementation using Microsoft Fabric and other Azure-native tools
• Data Governance & Security: Azure Purview, role-based access control, encryption, and compliance frameworks
• Advanced Analytics & AI Integration: Azure Machine Learning, Cognitive Services, and integration with Power BI
• ETL/ELT Pipelines: Development and optimisation using ADF, Spark, and SQL
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Bicep, Terraform, and ARM templates for data platform provisioning
• DevOps for Data: CI/CD pipelines for data workloads using Azure DevOps and GitHub
• Performance Tuning & Cost Optimisation: Rightsizing, workload management, and hybrid benefit strategies
• Certifications: DP-600 (Fabric Analytics Engineer), DP-700 (Fabric Data Engineer), DP-300 (Azure Database Administrator), AZ-305 (Azure Solutions Architect Expert) recommended

What you'll bring: 

• Proven experience in banking, superannuation, or insurance environments
• Ability to engage with technical and business stakeholders, including CIOs and CISOs
• Strong communication and collaboration skills
• A growth mindset and commitment to continuous learning
• Passion for mentoring and contributing to technical communities

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.