Senior Cloud Solution Architect

Overview

We are looking for a senior Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) - Azure Infrastructure, Modernisation & AI to join our Customer Success team. This IC5 role will serve as a trusted technical advisor to strategic enterprise customers, helping them design, modernise and operate secure, resilient and AI-ready solutions on Microsoft Azure.

The role requires strong hands-on architecture and engineering depth across Azure infrastructure and platform services, combined with practical experience in application and database modernisation and a strong understanding of how modern Azure platforms enable AI workloads.

The successful candidate will work directly with customer architects, engineers and technology leaders to translate business and technical priorities into executable architectures and modernisation roadmaps. They will lead complex engagements from architecture and readiness assessment through migration, modernisation, production deployment and optimisation, while helping customers establish the secure, governed and scalable platform foundations required for AI.

As an IC5 CSA, this individual is expected to operate independently in complex customer environments, influence senior technical stakeholders, provide architectural leadership across multiple technology domains, and contribute technical leadership and best practices across the wider CSA community.

Responsibilities

• Lead Azure architecture and modernisation engagements for strategic enterprise customers, providing deep technical guidance from assessment and architecture through implementation and production adoption.
• Architect enterprise Azure platforms spanning compute, networking, storage, identity, security, governance, management, observability, business continuity and disaster recovery.
• Drive end-to-end modernisation, helping customers evolve from traditional infrastructure and virtual-machine-based environments towards modern Azure platform services across infrastructure, applications and databases.
• Provide strong database architecture and optimisation expertise, particularly across Azure SQL and SQL Server, including migration, performance optimisation, availability, scalability and modernisation patterns.
• Build AI-ready cloud foundations, helping customers design landing zones, networking, security, identity, governance, infrastructure-as-code and operational capabilities that support Azure AI and Microsoft Foundry workloads in production.
• Partner with AI and application specialists to help customers take AI solutions beyond experimentation and into secure, scalable and governed production environments.
• Assess customer estates and develop actionable cloud migration and modernisation roadmaps, identifying technical dependencies, risks, architecture decisions and opportunities to accelerate customer outcomes.
• Apply architecture best practices for resilience, security, reliability, performance, operational excellence and cost optimisation, helping customers continuously improve the health of their Azure environments.
• Use Infrastructure as Code, automation, GitHub and AI-assisted engineering practices to accelerate architecture, deployment and modernisation activities.
• Lead technical workshops, architecture/design sessions, proof-of-concepts and production-readiness engagements with customer engineering and architecture teams.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor, simplifying complex technology choices, challenging existing assumptions where appropriate, and helping customers make informed architecture decisions.
• Work closely across Microsoft sales, Customer Success, engineering, Global Delivery, partners and specialist teams to remove technical blockers and accelerate customer solutions into production.
• Own technical execution against committed customer outcomes and proactively identify opportunities for additional Azure adoption, modernisation and consumption.
• Contribute technical leadership to the broader CSA community through mentoring, architecture reviews, reusable patterns, technical content and sharing of customer learnings.

Qualifications

Technical Experience

• Significant experience designing, implementing and operating large-scale enterprise cloud platforms, preferably on Microsoft Azure.
• Deep technical expertise in several core Azure infrastructure domains, including: Azure compute and virtualisation Azure networking and hybrid connectivity Storage Identity and access Security and governance Azure Landing Zones Monitoring and observability High availability, resiliency and disaster recovery
• Strong experience with SQL Server and/or Azure database technologies, with the ability to advise customers on database architecture, migration, modernisation, performance tuning, availability and scalability.
• Demonstrated experience with cloud migration and modernisation, including transitioning traditional infrastructure and applications towards cloud-native and managed Azure services.
• Experience with automation and Infrastructure as Code, such as Bicep, ARM, Terraform, PowerShell, Azure CLI or equivalent technologies.
• Good understanding of DevOps and modern engineering practices, including Git/GitHub and CI/CD.

AI & Modern Platform Capability

• Strong understanding of the Azure platform requirements for running enterprise AI solutions in production, including networking, identity, security, governance, observability, capacity and operational readiness.
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Foundry / Azure AI services, generative AI and agentic AI concepts, with the ability to collaborate effectively with specialist AI architects.
• Understanding of responsible and governed AI deployment, including security, identity, data protection, observability and lifecycle considerations.
• Ability to rapidly learn emerging technologies and apply them to real customer architecture and engineering scenarios.

Architecture & Customer Leadership

• Proven ability to design and communicate complex end-to-end enterprise architectures spanning multiple technical domains.
• Strong customer-facing consulting and technical advisory experience with the ability to lead architecture discussions with senior architects, engineering leaders and technology executives.
• Ability to translate business requirements into architecture decisions, technical roadmaps and measurable customer outcomes.
• Strong problem-solving and troubleshooting skills with experience working through complex production and architecture challenges.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical decisions without direct authority and collaborate across customers, partners and multidisciplinary internal teams.

IC5 Leadership Expectations

• Operates independently across ambiguous and highly complex customer environments.
• Provides technical leadership beyond individual engagements and helps establish architecture patterns and best practices for the broader team.
• Mentors and develops other engineers and architects through technical coaching, architecture reviews and knowledge sharing.
• Identifies emerging customer and technology trends and converts them into reusable approaches that can scale across multiple customers.
• Demonstrates a strong customer-outcome mindset, combining technical depth with commercial awareness and an understanding of how architecture decisions translate into adoption and Azure consumption.

Preferred Qualifications

• Azure architecture experience equivalent to Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) level.
• Experience with enterprise-scale Azure Landing Zones and hybrid/multi-cloud architecture.
• Experience with regulated enterprise environments, particularly financial services, is highly desirable.
• Experience helping customers move AI, application or data solutions from proof-of-concept into secure and governed production environments.

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.