Security Presales Technical Specialist

at  Microsoft

The Microsoft Security organization’s objective of making the world a safer place has never been more important. As threats become more frequent and sophisticated, we must work to keep our customers safe through our Security Solutions. The Solution Specialist Unit team within the Microsoft Security organization is at the forefront of this effort, engaging directly with customers to contribute to their success. With thousands of global security experts worldwide, $1 billion+ invested annually in security research and development, and the cutting-edge AI- based Security innovations, Microsoft is ideally placed to think outside of the box and protecting customers, and partners around the world.
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.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Master’s degree or Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field OR equivalent experience
• Extensive technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR equivalent experience

Technology Sales:

• Technical Depth: Hands on and expert level technical knowledge of relevant products and solutions
• Technical Sales Acumen: Experience presenting the value of technology solutions and architectures through customer presentations, design sessions, POCs accelerating technical wins.

Professional:

• Excellent communicator: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to present technical information clearly and concisely.
• Develop and maintain technical expertise: A technical specialist must stay up to date with the latest developments and advancements in security space including new tech, competitors, and internal product and services offerings.
• Growth Mindset. Experience and passion for learning (technical and professional skills); implementing practices from others; trying, failing, and learning from both successes and failures; sharing practices and knowledge for others’ benefit.
• Problem Solving: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to think creatively and develop innovative solutions to technical challenges.
• Multi-Tasking: Ability to work independently and manage multiple priorities simultaneously.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations

Education

• Builds readiness plans for peers and proactively identifies gaps and new opportunities for learning. Provides insight onto Corporate, business and product groups, sales strategy, and business reviews for impact.
• Acts as a technical thought leader by sharing best practices (e.g., architectures, materials) and regularly delivering content at Microsoft events (e.g., TechReady). Provides insight into how to identify opportunities to increase solutions/portfolio understanding.
• Monitors, responds to, and acts as a thought leader on internal tech community posts, establishes and leads vibrant tech communities including community calls, sessions, hackathons, etc., and acts as a mentor to the community

Scale Customer Engagements

• As a Security Technical Specialist, your primary goal is to gain the technical decision of customers to purchase and use our range of security-focused solutions
• Proactively identifies and engages with key customer technical decision makers and influencers while engaging sales team and helping lead sales strategy.
• Uses knowledge of customer context, and deep technical, domain, and industry knowledge to build credibility with customers.
• Leads and ensures complex technical wins (e.g., cross-workload, cross-team, cross-geo, subsidiary-level impact) by establishing rules of engagement (e.g., role boundaries, handoff strategies), coaching others (e.g., technical sellers, account teams), leveraging knowledge of processes (e.g., Managed Service Provider [MSP], Managed Certified Professional [MCP]), tools, and programs (e.g., FastTrack, End Customer Investment Funds [ECIFs]). Ensures alignment of Microsoft technologies with future sector standards and requirements by working with industry boards and driving customer case studies and references.
• Leverages knowledge of resources (e.g., roles, Microsoft Technology Center [MTC], demo sites, virtual sites, Value Based Delivery [VBD], Customer Success Unit [CSU) and proactively engages product teams (e.g., engineering) to remediate escalated technical blockers by conveying impact and anticipating and addressing future potential blockers based on needs.

Leverage Partner Ecosystem

• Scales wins through partner in a sell-with environment by promoting the partner within the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., account teams) and developing deep partner relationships.
• Supports partner technical capacity by monitoring and analyzing resources through interactions, communicating with managers, and identifying new partnership opportunities to build subsidiary strategy.

Build Strategy

• Builds competitive knowledge, documents compete patterns, and shares within the community to drive change and escalations for competitive selling strategies. Acts as a subject matter expert on a particular competition. Delivers competitive knowledge back to product and engineering teams.
• Proactively develops strategic cross-workload/subsidiary and account level responses to specific market threats by identifying market patterns and delivering feedback to business group on trends and needs.
• Works with local account and marketing teams to shape strategic win and customer success plans and tailors to audience for the local markets using knowledge of Microsoft offerings, their context in the competitive landscape, and broader market trends. Where applicable, builds consumption plans with moderately complex requirements in coordination with Partner and Industry Solutions Delivery teams after customer sign-off.

Solution Design and Proof

• Demonstrates and oversees demonstrations (e.g., architectural design sessions, and proof of concept [POC] sessions, pilots, hackathons) of solutions based on multiple products and position solutions against competitors. Leverages partner/customer teams as needed to prove capabilities and programmatic framework for re-use by the business.
• Adapts and extends architecture patterns to accommodate complex customer requirements and drive integration solutions for industry flavor. Delivers assets that can be leveraged by others in the business.
• Applies advanced sales methodologies (e.g., challenger sales) to guide customers through digital transformation solutions and uses innovation to challenge solutions against changing technology (e.g., Power Apps).

Education

• Builds readiness plans for peers and proactively identifies gaps and new opportunities for learning. Provides insight onto Corporate, business and product groups, sales strategy, and business reviews for impact.
• Acts as a technical thought leader by sharing best practices (e.g., architectures, materials) and regularly delivering content at Microsoft events (e.g., TechReady). Provides insight into how to identify opportunities to increase solutions/portfolio understanding.
• Monitors, responds to, and acts as a thought leader on internal tech community posts, establishes and leads vibrant tech communities including community calls, sessions, hackathons, etc., and acts as a mentor to the community.