Architect Manager

Overview

Microsoft Industry Solutions Delivery (ISD) is a global organization hosting over 6,000 strategic sellers, industry and security experts, elite engineers, world-class data scientists and architects, consultants, and delivery specialists. Together with our partners, we help Microsoft’s most strategic customers worldwide to address their specific challenges and provide comprehensive and industry-specific solutions that meet their unique needs. ISD is at the forefront of innovation, driving value across the entirety of the customers’ digital and AI transformation journey through repeatable and customized cutting-edge solutions through strategic engagements with customers across the globe powered by Microsoft Cloud and AI.

Responsibilities

People Management

Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.

Model - Live our culture. Embody our values. Practice our leadership principles.

Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes. Enable success across boundaries. Help the team adapt and learn.

Care - Attract and retain great people. Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations. Invest in the growth of others.

Understanding Customer/Partner Technical Environment

Provides support for their team in gathering and propagating customer/partner insights to help shape and form both the definition and ongoing execution of the project. Holds teams accountable for mapping architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes, and ensures that proposed solutions are aligned with broader organizational strategy. Leverages prior work, customer/partner insights, and industry trends, and shares insights with team to apply.

Supports their team in working with customer/partner stakeholders (e.g., Enterprise Architects, Security Team, Development Team, Operations Team) and business sponsor to socialize both the business solution and the project approach. Advises team on managing changes and facilitating feedback. Uses broad patterns of feedback to develop strategic and actionable insights and presents a compelling business case to program managers that influences product roadmaps and decision making. Contributes to Microsoft-centric operations and cadences to align with customer feedback.

Drives internal advocacy by facilitating insight sharing with Product Engineering teams, and providing guidance through escalation, acceleration, and prioritization. Looks across multiple customers/partners for opportunities to consolidate and prioritize items across the business. Mentors peers and teams on best practices around internal resources usage. When appropriate, establishes accountabilities to drive customer outcomes and ensure internal stakeholders are in place. Ensures that customer opportunities, questions, and/or issues are brought to the appropriate internal teams.

Architecture Design and Deployment

Holds teams accountable for leveraging existing architecture approaches to achieve Microsoft's agreed commitments to the customer/partner and developing new solutions to scale across multiple customers/partners and markets. When appropriate, governs areas of fiscal responsibility, through delivery team, staying within budget while driving engagement profitability and risk management.

Guides team in defining and documenting the architecture through an architecture description document, an architecture decisions log, and a requirements/constraints traceability matrix. Ensures team is equipped to communicate the value proposition of the business solution along with the project approach. Guides team in cost-based and technology-based discussions to explain the architecture in terms of its build, deployment, and ongoing operational use to determine customer appetite for the business solution. Promotes a business-value approach that values return on investment (ROI) and customer costs-savings over technical ease of execution. Provides coaching to allow architects to scale solutions. Support new customer opportunities in partnership with Sales with highly significant or global impacts for Microsoft, as needed.

Collaborates with the other managers to jointly drive project/technical governance of the design, build, and deployment into use of proof of concepts (POCs) and pilots. Provides end-to-end governance, oversight, and thought leadership within assigned account. Provides guidance to team in understanding and demonstrating business value (e.g., release of revenue, cost savings) that the business solution realizes.

Guides team in working with the business sponsor and customer/partner stakeholders (e.g., Business users, Enterprise Architects, Security Team, Operations Team) to gather and ratify requirements and constraints. Supports team in managing and resolving highly complex ambiguity in the requirements and constraints and documents assumptions and implications where it cannot be resolved. Ensures maintenance of the requirements/constraints traceability matrix to prove that solution components have a rationale/justification for inclusion in the architecture of the business solution. Oversees development and execution of test plans to prove that each requirement/constraint has been implemented as expected by the customer.

Leads team in collaborating to understand the business solution/problem. Drives agreement, based on the customer’s priorities, requirements/constraints, approach, principles, concepts, and expectations. Ensures team builds and documents a realistically costed, advanced/complex solution approach. Provides thought leadership on oversight and governance sets expectations for quality practices and standards to realize the business solution. Promotes a cohesive build methodology so the solution can be transitioned to live operations, leveraging solution expertise. Ensures communication of and adherence to the pre-sales value proposition. Ensures that customer opportunities, questions, and/or issues are brought to the appropriate internal teams. When appropriate, negotiates, collaborates on, reviews, and contributes to deal approval processes. Challenges deal construct to ensure Microsoft initiatives are incorporated appropriately. Communicates current view of delivery to customer executives on regular cadence, as needed. When appropriate, oversees a broad portfolio of accounts. Manages and ensures the all-up delivery of consulting engagements, as necessary. Innovates and implements long-term, strategic plans, in partnership with Sales to create new opportunities and sustainable growth for customer accounts across the portfolio, as needed. Ensures delivery team alignment and holds delivery team accountable for delivering on sales strategy.

Creates a culture and clarity around technical insights and escalations, and ensures broad sets of projects move forward. Provides support and guidance to team in identifying scenarios that could slow or impede pre-sales/delivery. Anticipates blockers and resolves escalations as needed and coaches team on best practices for handling escalations. Ensures that issues and blockers and addressed by the appropriate groups. Identifies widespread patterns in blockers across business areas or territories. Develops strategies to prevent blockers and issues in the future. When necessary, attends steering committee meetings with strategic customers to remove blockers and ensure delivery success.

Works in close collaboration with the Project Manager and Account Team to anticipate, identify, categorize, and communicate business and technical risks. Defines risk mitigation activities that are foundational to the project plan. Defines risk contingency plans for invocation should the risk occur. Outlines methodology and governance principles and practices for the broader organization that allows others to minimize risks.

Practice Development

Generates new and/or improvements to existing intellectual property. Anticipates and addres