Solution Specialist - Modern Work

at  Microsoft

Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. Growth mindset encourages each of us to lean in and learn what matters most to our customers, to create the foundational knowledge that enables us to make customer-first decisions in everything we do. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us achieve our mission.
The Microsoft Federal organization was established to address the unique mission, legal/regulatory requirements, and procurement rules and processes of the United States Government (USG). Microsoft Federal is committed to ensuring its resources – including appropriately qualified, experienced, and certified personnel (with necessary security clearances or otherwise) are available as needed to meet USG evolving needs. To that end, Microsoft embraces, as a mission-critical philosophy, flexibility in the recruiting, hiring, and workforce assignment of Microsoft Federal personnel. Microsoft Federal personnel can expect to serve in various roles in the Microsoft Federal organization during the course of their career to meet evolving USG needs, regardless of segment – Civilian, Defense, or intelligence community.
As a Solution Specialist - Modern Work, you will be a solution expert within our Federal Operating Unit focused on Civilian customers. Working with our federal agencies, you will help establish their AI Strategy, prioritizing key use cases that drive differentiated business outcomes. You will share Microsoft’s AI capabilities, roadmap and envision with customers how AI can transform and drive co-innovation in their business. You collaborate with a team of deep technical experts to build solutions that orchestrate large language models, Azure OpenAI services, vision, speech, machine learning using modern app development principles. You will work closely with customers in workshops to identify and prioritize use cases, design and build rapid prototypes and support minimum viable product (MVP) solution design to production deployment. You will be joining a team of highly skilled experts across the company who are driving some of the most strategic and innovative customer AI projects.
The AI Federal team is a growing organization that consists of Specialist Sales and Technology experts, who focus on specific domains, industries, and workloads, such as Co-Pilot, Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Services, Application Development and Machine Learning.
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.
In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

REQUIRED/MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• 5+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 4+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.

OTHER QUALIFICATIONS

Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This role will require access to information that is controlled for export under export control regulations, potentially under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or Export Administration Regulations, the EU Dual Use Regulation, and/or other export control regulations. As a condition of employment, the successful candidate will be required to provide proof of citizenship, U.S. permanent residency, or other protected status (e.g., under 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(3)) for assessment of eligibility to access the export-controlled information. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport. Lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees may verify status using other documents, where applicable.
Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local government agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport.
Cloud Screening:
Candidates must be able to successfully complete and pass a Microsoft Cloud background screening. Required Cloud Screenings will be administered on a recurring bi-annual basis.

ADDITIONAL OR PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 7+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, or related field AND 6+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Master’s Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND 3+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.
• 4+ years solution or services sales experience.
• 3+ years of AI (Machine Learning, Intelligent Apps/Agents, Search) selling experience in enterprise public cloud-based solutions.
• 8+ years of experience with managing implementation lifecycle for delivery of ML and analytics solutions. Work experience should involve pre-sales support, risk management, technical consulting, solution design, project envisioning, planning, development, deployment, and management.
• Experience and skills with Azure AI services
• Knowledge of the AI open-source ecosystem
• Experience with building AI and machine learning solutions, Machine Learning Operation frameworks, and leveraging specific machine learning architectures (e.g., deep learning, LSTM, etc.)
• Understanding of Responsible AI practice
• Certifications with Azure AI or equivalent industry certifications preferred
• Demonstrated understanding of a typical AI, ML & App dev lifecycle and associated operations (Dev Ops, MLOps) for sustainable enterprise installations of cloud architecture
• Knowledge of current and emerging AI technology, including Generative AI technology applications and use cases (including, but not limited to, Large Language Models) and Foundational models toolsets
  Solution Area Specialists IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $102,300 - $180,300 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 $140,900 - $199,000 per year.
  Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
  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

• Stakeholder Management: Disciplined in business management, engages the customer early, with new and relevant insights. Demonstrated experience influencing senior stakeholders across the value lifecycle of large customer cloud & AI engagements.
• Experienced Seller: Disciplined in opportunity management, meeting sales targets and operational standards. Demonstrated experience and track record in successfully enabling high value customer solutions and meeting/exceeding sales targets. Mentors’ other sellers via coaching.
• Solution Expert: Deep understanding of unique solution value, key areas of differentiation, and knowledge to create industry-centric use cases for AI, Cognitive Services and Generative AI. Develop a solid understanding of the customer’s technical and business history, requirements, and challenges that are relevant to the opportunity. Own and drive commercial conversation including showcasing TCO/Business value, as needed to secure customer commitment. Leverage Strategic Pursuits Team / Deal Desk and Sales Acceleration Programs, as needed eventually leading to MVP projects to launch.
• Audience Credibility: Has credibility with key decision makers within our customers. Ability to influence target decision makers such as Business Decision Makers, Operational Technology Leaders, Data engineer, Data Scientist etc.
• Executive Presence: Experience and expertise selling to senior business decision makers by aligning and reinforcing the value of the solution to the customer’s overall business pain and/or strategic opportunities and decision criteria.
• Excellent Communicator and Collaborator: Effective relationship building, negotiation, organizational, presentation, written, and verbal communication skills. Ability to effectively collaborate across teams and drive meaningful outcomes with corporate, field, partner and customer stakeholders.Solution Envisioning: Well versed with facilitating envisioning and Design-led thinking methods to help formulate with customers and envision a future that can be enabled by AI.
• Purposeful Planner and Orchestrator: Builds a purposeful AI growth plan with a bold ambition to identify and capitalize on transformational shifts in the market and leads plan orchestration and execution across a virtual team through influence.
• Skill Enablement: A passion for and demonstrated capability of scaling own knowledge with others and building organizational capability in a targeted solution area.
• Addressing Industry scenarios with technology: Demonstrated effectiveness in landing technology scenarios in industry-relevant ways and credibility to lead and influence niche industry conversations.
• AI Landscape: Sound understanding of Microsoft’s AI technologies and AI technologies landscape.
• Partner Knowledge: Demonstrated understanding of the AI partner ecosystem and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs.
• Technical Expertise: Leads conversations and sets up events within Microsoft, mentors others and develops strategies for best practice sharing, initiates conversations with prospective customers/partners at events, acts as a subject matter expert in one or more solution area(s).
• Collaborates with partners and internal ecosystems to analyze competitor products, solutions, and/or services and implement strategies.
• Embody our culture and values