About this role

Overview Microsoft Industry Solutions - Global Center Innovation and Delivery Center (GCID) delivers end-to-end solutions by enabling accelerated adoption and productive use of Microsoft technologies. An organization of well over 1000+ exceptional people, GCID presents a great opportunity for highly skilled services professionals to make a foray into consulting, solution development and delivery roles. The Architect is a senior leader responsible for the successful technical execution and delivery of complex client projects across diverse domains. This role acts as a strategic anchor between clients, leadership team, delivery managers, project managers, and delivery team(s). In the AI-first GCID organization, Architects are expected to embed AI-native thinking into delivery models, ensuring solutions are intelligent, scalable, and aligned with business outcomes. The ideal candidate is passionate about technology, demonstrates breadth of expertise, and advocates for solutions that deliver true client value. Responsibilities AI-First Delivery Leadership<ul style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0cm;" type="disc"><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Embed AI-first mindset into delivery workflows, leveraging automation and intelligent orchestration where applicable.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Lead end-to-end delivery of complex projects, ensuring solutions are scalable, robust, and aligned with client business outcomes.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Drive engineering excellence through reusable components, accelerators, and scalable architecture.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Oversee technical execution across multiple projects, ensuring adherence to best practices, quality standards, and compliance requirements.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Collaborate with clients and internal stakeholders to define strategies, delivery plans, milestones, and risk mitigation approaches.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Act as a technical point of contact for clients, translating business requirements into scalable technical solutions.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Ensure delivery models are optimized for modern AI-native execution, including integration of automation and intelligent processes. <ul style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0cm;" type="disc"><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Ability to step into at‑risk projects, quickly assess issues, and establish a credible path to recovery or exit.</li></ul> Engineering ExcellencePromote high-quality architecture and ensure integrity and performance across delivery. Establish secure coding, test-driven development, observability, and performance standards as defaults. Support ongoing learning and certifications to stay current. Advance adoption of modern methodologies like Agile, DevOps, and CI/CD for scalable solutions. Cultivate technical rigor, innovation, and accountability within the team.Innovation & Thought LeadershipApply AI-driven design for user-focused solutions that support business, architecture, and delivery goals. Assess modern technologies to guide strategy. Drive innovation in delivery methods and reusable tools to boost efficiency. Promote best practices and continuous improvement across teams.Client Engagement & SolutioningEngage with clients to assess their needs and provide guidance throughout projects. Additionally, assist pre-sales teams by preparing estimates, demonstrating products, and developing proposals. Maintain strong client relationships to ensure ongoing satisfaction and deliver value.Team Management & MentorshipLead cross-functional teams to encourage learning, collaboration, and technical excellence. Review work, give feedback, and support team members' growth.Quality & ComplianceEnsure secure, compliant, and reliable solution delivery through secure coding, test driven‑ development, observability, design reviews, and quality gates across all engagements. Qualifications & Preferred Skills<ul style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0cm;" type="disc"><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">12+ years of experience in software/solution engineering, with at least 10+ years as Architect and Delivery leadership roles.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Proven experience in leading delivery of complex, multi-disciplinary projects.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Strong understanding of delivery methodologies (Agile, Scrum, DevOps, etc.) and adopt emerging practices for faster Go To Market (GTM) using Hyper Velocity Engineering </li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Excellent communication, stakeholder management, problem-solving, and team leadership skills.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Relevant certifications are a plus.</li></ul> Areas of ExpertiseEnterprise Data Architecture & Modern Platforms<ul style="margin-bottom: 0.0cm; margin-top: 0.0px;"><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Lead enterprise data modernization initiatives in close collaboration with Customer, team and Enterprise Architects, spanning assessment, target‑state design, and optimization.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Drive and influence architectural decisions for modern data platforms, providing hands‑on delivery leadership across Microsoft, Microsoft Purview, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory, and partner platforms such as Snowflake and Teradata.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Partner with Customer teams, cross functional Architects on workload characterization, environment separation, capacity planning, balancing performance, scalability, resilience, and total cost of ownership.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 8.0pt 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Share accountability with Delivery Managers, Development team for production rollout, owning performance outcomes, operational stability, and long‑term sustainability through continuous optimization and issue resolution.</li></ul>Data Engineering & Large Scale Data Processing<ul style="margin-bottom: 0.0cm; margin-top: 0.0px;"><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Hands‑on leadership in designing, building, and operating large‑scale batch and streaming data pipelines using Apache Spark, Databricks, Kafka, Hadoop, Hive, and HDInsight.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Own data engineering standards, SLAs, SLOs, and performance baselines, while actively implementing and reviewing critical pipelines.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Lead and perform performance assessments, compute sizing, partition strategies and concurrency management.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 8.0pt 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Drive AIOps, DataOps practices in monitoring, alerting, capacity scaling, and continuous optimization.</li></ul>Database Platforms, Performance & Capacity Engineering<ul style="margin-bottom: 0.0cm; margin-top: 0.0px;"><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Hands‑on expertise across Azure SQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, Teradata, Netezza, Cosmos DB, and columnar analytics engines.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Lead and execute database performance assessments, capacity planning, and workload sizing for transactional, analytical, and AI workloads.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Perform query tuning, execution plan analysis, indexing strategy design, wait state analysis (e.g., CXPACKET), and storage/I/O optimization.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 8.0pt 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Accountable for delivering predictable, scalable, and cost efficient database performance in production.</li></ul>AI First Data Engineering & Unify Your Data<ul style="margin-bottom: 0.0cm; margin-top: 0.0px;"><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Design and implement agentic AI workflows that assist in data discovery, preparation, profiling, validation, and performance optimization.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Actively adopt and promote use large language models to automate data engineering tasks such as schema inference, pipeline generation, metadata enrichment, documentation, and tuning recommendations.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Lead AI powered data wrangling solutions, while maintaining governance, explainability, and human in the loop controls.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 8.0pt 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Accountable for operationalizing autonomous assisted data platforms in real customer environments.</li></ul>AI & Advanced Analytics Enablement<ul style="margin-bottom: 0.0cm; margin-top: 0.0px;"><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Architecture definition to integrate AI and ML workloads into data platforms, including performance tuning and cost optimization.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Design, lead to implement, and optimize solutions using AI Agents where viable using Azure Machine Learning, Azure OpenAI, and Azure AI Services, including RAG pipelines and inference workloads.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Ensure AI and analytics solutions are grounded help improving trust, explainability, and relevance of AI outputs.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Tune AI systems for retrieval latency, inference performance, concurrency, and cost, using telemetry and real usage patterns.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Embed observability, monitoring, drift detection, and performance metrics into production AI systems.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Ensure Responsible AI principles are applied in all AI solutions.</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 8.0pt 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Balance governance, performance, and usability by implementing governance by default patterns that scale self-service access without introducing friction</li></ul>Solutioning, Pre-Sales & Technical Leadership <ul style="margin-bottom: 0.0cm; margin-top: 0.0px;"><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Lead technical solutioning, estimations, and support architecture design during pre-sales and delivery shaping. </li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Translate business outcomes into clear architecture, execution plans, and risk mitigation strategies. </li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Influence technical direction across multiple teams and engagements. </li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 8.0pt 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Act as a trusted advisor to clients and internal leadership </li></ul>Frontier Consulting Skills<ul style="margin-bottom: 0.0cm; margin-top: 0.0px;"><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Full Stack Engineering </li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Lead rapid prototyping, pilots, and early-stage deployments for enterprise customers </li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Ability to go from whiteboard to production with minimal friction </li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Strong troubleshooting and production support expertise, including performance, reliability, and security issues </li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Outcome driven engineering focused on business impact, not activity </li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Adopt Hyper Velocity Engineering (HVE) methodology for rapid production deployment of AI Services</li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 0.0cm 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Building reusable assets, accelerators, and reference implementations </li><li style="margin: 0.0cm 0.0cm 8.0pt 48.0px; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Comfortable operating in ambiguous, high-pressure environments with C-Level customer stakeholders </li></ul> Personal Attributes<ul style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0cm;" type="disc"><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Passion for technology and innovation.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Ability to interact confidently with senior leaders and clients.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Strong decision-making skills and a consultative mindset.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Flexibility to manage a fast-moving, ambiguous consulting environment.</li><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Commitment to continuous learning on emerging technologies </li></ul> Other <ul style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0cm;" type="disc"><li style="margin-top: 0.0cm; margin-right: 0.0cm; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Embody our <a href="https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/culture&data=04%7c01%7closmit%40microsoft.com%7c27f2181d96804234953708d8f3b22d06%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1%7c0%7c637527293867872556%7cUnknown%7cTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7c1000&sdata=QnmEU%2BvawaPM5eEUL1FxWPmhizgKnDLFj6dlUTOWRB0%3D&reserved=0">culture</a> and <a href="https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/about/corporate-values&data=04%7c01%7closmit%40microsoft.com%7c27f2181d96804234953708d8f3b22d06%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1%7c0%7c637527293867882502%7cUnknown%7cTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7c1000&sdata=p3lkWaIXzH3t9t1hS9bOfKhtDFWPj6gi8zZU94LWRso%3D&reserved=0">values</a> </li></ul></li></ul> Qualifications Required/Minimum Qualifications Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 12+ years' experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or technology domain (e.g., Security) OR master's degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 12+ years' experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or technology domain (e.g., Security) OR equivalent experience. Additional or Preferred Qualifications Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 12+ years' experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or technology domain (e.g., Security) OR master's degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 12+ years' experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or technology domain (e.g., Security) OR equivalent experience. 8+ years technical sales experience. 8+ years project management experience. Technical or Professional Certification in Domain (e.g., Security). This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. <hr> 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 <a href="https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html">requesting accommodations.</a>