Principal Solution Engineer, Global Black Belt (GBB) Cloud & AI Applications

Microsoft's Commercial Solution Area (CSA) sets the sales strategy, leads technical sales, and operations as a hub for the Commercial Solution Areas and Support Services that power the Microsoft Cloud.

As an Azure Global Black Belt (GBB) Cloud & AI Apps Principal Solution Engineer, you are a senior technical leader with deep technical expertise within our enterprise sales organization, working with our most important customers. You will own securing the technical decision to help customers realize the AI and digital transformation through cloud computing. You will proactively identify and remove technical roadblocks to accelerate customer progress and solution adoption. You'll guide customers through secure, scalable solution design, influence technical decisions, and accelerate AI Transformation and scaling AI application and agent developmentthrough Azure AI Foundry and the full Microsoft Application Platform - including Azure App Services, Containers, Azure Kubernetes Service, Developer Tools, and GitHub, able to identify projects, develop and share repeatable IPs (e.g., reference architectures, solution accelerators) to drive business and technical decisions. You will build and maintain relationships with customers, influence long-term strategic direction and act as a trusted advisor, driving engagement at the CXO level with technology decision makers.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities:

• Complex Deals Support: Engage deeply with customers to understand their complex technical needs and challenges and ensure that solutions meet their requirements and accelerate pipeline.
• Be an expert on Cloud & AI Apps and Agents technologies
  • Expert on full stack App architecture design / modernization and cloud native dev (e.g., APIs, containerization, microservices, event-driven, Python, Java, .NET)
  • Expert for AI & ML models (e.g., Agentic AI framework, AI Foundry, Semantic Kernel, Foundry SDK, Responsible AI, fine-tuning/inferencing, etc.)
• Advising C-Suite in Customers: Develop and maintain a robust relationship with technical executives in top customers (e.g., CIO, CISO, CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Development), gaining their mindshare and trust in Azure platform.
• Remove Customer and Product Technical Roadblocks: Identify and resolve technical roadblocks that may hinder customer progress, enabling the account team to accelerate the pipeline and convert deals. When product-related issues arise, engage engineering through the go to market team to clarify and address them. Continue supporting both the customer and the account team throughout the resolution process.
• Win Over Competitors & Secure Technical Decisions: Deep technical compete expert on the assigned specialization area against major Public Cloud Hyper Scalers competitors by removing technical roadblocks and leading w/MSFT product differentiators to demonstrate superior technical solutions. Build win back or surround competitive strategies, aligned with the customer's goals and objectives. Embed security by design across identity, data, infra, and app layers, mapping to compliance frameworks.
• Incubation to Mainstream:Identify tech scenarios and leverage/build packageable solution accelerators, reference architectures, demos, and automation frameworks to bring additional value across customers and regions.
• Engineering Feedback Loop: Working with Go to market team on outbound motionthrough product capabilities and creating incubation execution plan and inbound motion through customer feedback on product capabilities to influence engineering product planning, roadmap, and development.
• Knowledge Transfer to Technical Roles:Work with enablement team as Subject matter expert (SME) and as a scale mechanism to skill local field solution engineers (SE) and SE managers through structured knowledge sharing, including technical briefings and readiness sessions.
• Thought Leadership: Be aleading expert within your area of specialization not limited to Microsoft products by speaking engagements, publishing blogs, videos, and walkthroughs that showcase innovative customer solutions, technical patterns IP, and best practices that drive scalable adoption.
• Other: Embo dy our culture and values

Qualifications:

Required Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 4+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 6+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
  • OR 7+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 4+ years experience leading the sales of large cloud engagements, especially those involving Cloud & AI Apps and Agents projects to large/global enterprise customers
• Experience leading technical engagements (e.g., Hackathons, Proof of Concepts, Minimum Viable Product) that drive production-scale outcomes

Other Qualifications:

• Microsoft is unable to sponsor a work visa for this role due to the nature of the role's job duties.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 8+ years technical pre-sales, technical consulting, or technology delivery, or related experience
• OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years experience with cloud and hybrid, or on premises infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, industry standards, and/or technology management.
• Certification in relevant technologies or disciplines (e.g., Office 365, Power BI, Azure Architect and Development exams, Cloud Platform Technologies, Information Security, Architecture).
• Experience selling to senior technical decision makers by aligning & reinforcing the business value and cost savings of the solution to the customer's overall business pain and/or strategic opportunities and decision criteria.
• Experience orchestrating and influencing virtual sales/technical/support/partner teams to pursue sales opportunities and lead v-teams through influence.
• Proficient on Agentic framework, AI Management & Security (e.g., Gen AI Ops, Sentinel, Responsible AI, orchestrator, monitoring).
• Skilled with 1 or more frameworks, tools, languages (e.g., GitHub, Copilot Studio, VS Code, Jupyter, PyCharm, Node.js, Python, Java, C#, C++, AI Assisted Dev Tools)
• Understanding of Microsoft Azure Cloud platform, or other public cloud platforms, including IaaS and PaaS technologies and how they translate into business impact. Versed in Cloud & AI Apps and Agents.
• Knowledge of enterprise software solutions and cloud and AI Apps and Agents competitor landscape including AWS and Google Cloud Platform.
• Understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs.

Solution Engineering IC5 - 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.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: ;br>
Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 20, 2025.

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. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. 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.