Senior Cloud Solution Architect - Developer Experience

Role Description

The Senior Cloud Solution Architect - Developer Experience (Digital Natives & ISVs) provides senior technical leadership to early-stage, high-engineering customers by guiding architectural decisions, improving developer workflows, and establishing scalable cloud and AI patterns that accelerate Azure alignment and developer productivity.

Responsibilities

• Early-Stage Architectural Leadership
  • Engage with high-engineering-density Digital Native and ISV customers that meet Dev CoE criteria.
  • Serve as senior technical advisor to founders, CTOs, platform leaders, and Staff+ engineering stakeholders.
  • Guide design of secure, scalable, AI-enabled architectures using Azure AI Foundry, GitHub Copilot, cloud-native compute, and modern engineering practices.
  • Lead design reviews, modernization discussions, and deep architectural evaluations that influence long-term technical direction.
  • Remove early engineering blockers by coordinating subject-matter experts and establishing clear architectural patterns.
• Developer Experience & AI Thought Leadership
  • Shape early developer workflows, tooling decisions, and AI-assisted engineering practices within high-velocity teams.
  • Drive adoption of Copilot, intelligent IDE workflows, and emerging agentic DevOps approaches.
  • Align customer engineering strategies with Microsoft’s platform roadmap, supporting informed technical decisions at critical early milestones.
• Pattern Development & Global Field Scalability
  • Translate recurring customer scenarios into reusable architecture patterns, templates, guides, and validated design scenarios.
  • Contribute to global communities of practice across CSAs and developer engineering teams.
  • Provide recurring, high-quality product feedback to Azure, GitHub, and PG engineering based on early-stage customer use cases.
  • Capture and distribute patterns that prevent repeated architectural pitfalls across Digital Native and ISV ecosystems.
• Business Impact & Organizational Alignment
  • Drive measurable customer impact through improved developer velocity, stronger architectural foundations, and early Azure alignment.
  • Partner with account-aligned CSAs, CSAMs, AEs, and engineering teams to ensure cohesive customer engagement.
  • Support FY27 Digital Native segmentation by enabling a consistent, repeatable early-stage engagement model.
  • Maintain operational rigor across governance, delivery excellence, time tracking, and cross-team alignment.

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.
• Experience working directly with developers, platform teams, and engineering leadership.
• Ability to lead architectural strategy discussions and influence senior technical decision-makers.
• Strong depth in cloud-native engineering, including microservices, APIs, containers, CI/CD, GitHub, DevOps, and observability practices.
• Hands-on expertise in AI/ML systems, vector search, RAG patterns, Azure AI Foundry, or modern agentic architecture approaches.
• Proven ability to create reusable architecture patterns, technical IP, or engineering best practices.

Requirements

• This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Candidates must have authorization to work in the United States that does not now or in the future require employer sponsorship.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• 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).
• Experience with Digital Native or ISV customer environments.
• Familiarity with developer productivity tooling and AI-assisted SDLC workflows.
• Ability to influence engineering strategy across multiple customers or geographies.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with product engineering teams across Azure, GitHub, or PG.

Compensation

The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $130,900 - $251,900 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $165,600 - $272,300 per year.

Application Process

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Equal Opportunity Employer

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.