Cloud & AI Specialist

Overview

As an Cloud & AI Specialist, you are a business leader with technical and business expertise within our enterprise sales organization, working with our most important customers. The main goal of an Azure Cloud & AI Specialist is to win the decision of customers to purchase and use Microsoft Azure & AI technologies and cloud services, as well as find new leads and opportunities through your engagements. 

You will work within a team of presales, technical, and services resources to help customers realize the digital transformation through cloud computing. You will identify opportunities, build a compelling business case, and drive the consumption project to production. You will build and maintain relationships with customers, partners,  influence long-term strategic direction and act as a trusted advisor driving engagement at the CxO level with business and 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

• Drive new business - creation of new pipeline in collaboration with technical resources and account team by identifying new opportunities within customer engagement and handing off to the Customer Success Unit team for pursuit. 
• Own presales discussions with customers and partners leveraging processes and tools, demos, and programs using consultative sales methodology and technical expertise to influence the customer vision; establish rules of engagement (e.g., role boundaries, handoff strategies) for extended teams. 

• Sales Account Planning and Management Strong and disciplined pipeline management, identification and analysis of customer usage trends, large dollar licensing and deal negotiation experience, understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs. 

• Consumption Business Strategy / Project Management. Experience leveraging cloud adoption methodologies and frameworks to structure application migration projects
  
  
• Be the Trusted advisor to customer technical leaders by being a Microsoft Intelligent Data and Analytics platform evangelist inclusive of new Data and Analytics projects, modernizing legacy Data Warehouse to the cloud, new Modern Data Warehousing deployments, real-time analytics, and end to end Data, Analytics and AI solutions. 
  
• Be the Voice of Customer to share customer insights within Presales organization and help removing key blockers and drive customer engagement.
• Work with technical teams, resources and partner ecosystem and build technical strategy: map the agreed customer vision into a strategy, resolve concerns, prevent, and remove technical blockers, and validating a strong business case for investment and translate technology complexity into business impact and work with the customer, account team, and partners to orchestrate a roadmap for implementation guiding the customer to choose the best Microsoft  Data and Analytics and AI platform for their needs.  
• Maintain and grow sales expertise in Public & Hybrid Cloud and relevant AI technologies while keeping up to date with market trends and competitive insights; collaborate and share with the Cloud & AI community. 

Qualifications

• Fluent in Czech or Slovak language
• Proven years of experience in leading the sales of public and or hybrid cloud transformation engagements or similar technical consulting experience OR Bachelor's Degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND A few years of experience leading the sales of public cloud engagements or technical consulting experience OR equivalent experience
• Sales Account Planning and Management: Strong and disciplined pipeline management, identification and analysis of customer usage trends, large dollar licensing and deal negotiation experience, understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs. 
  • Executive Presence. Experience and expertise selling to senior business 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.
  • Collaborative. Orchestrate and influence virtual sales/technical/support/partner teams to pursue sales opportunities and lead v-teams through influence

 

• Consumption Business Strategy / Project Management. Experience leveraging cloud adoption methodologies and frameworks to structure application migration projects

 

• Cloud & AI Platform.  Understanding of Microsoft Azure Cloud & AI platform, or other public cloud platforms, including IaaS and PaaS technologies and how they translate into business impact.  Versed in cloud migration and modernization.
• Competitive Landscape. Knowledge of enterprise software solutions, Cloud & AI competitor landscape including AWS, GCP, Oracle, Anthropic and others.
• Partners. Understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs.
• Certification in relevant technologies or disciplines (e.g. Data Management, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Platform Technologies, Cloud Architectures) is preferred.

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

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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.