Director of Solution Engineering, Cloud & AI Platforms

Overview

Are you passionate about helping customers transform their businesses through AI, cloud modernization, application innovation, and data-driven transformation?

The Cloud & AI Platforms Solution Engineering organization partners with enterprise customers to accelerate AI adoption, modernize applications and infrastructure, unlock data value, and drive business transformation on Microsoft Cloud. As the Director of Solution Engineering for the Cloud & AI Platforms team, you will lead a high-performing organization of Solution Engineering Managers and Solution Engineers responsible for winning technical decisions, driving customer business outcomes, accelerating Azure growth, and enabling customers to become Frontier Firms through AI-powered innovation.

This role combines people leadership, technical leadership, strategic business ownership, and customer engagement. You will work closely with Specialist Sales, Customer Success, Industry Solutions, Partners, Product Engineering, and Business Leaders to develop and execute growth strategies across some of Microsoft's largest enterprise customers.

As a manager of managers, you will be responsible for organizational performance, talent strategy, operational excellence, and execution against business objectives while cultivating a culture of accountability, inclusion, learning, and customer obsession.

Responsibilities

Organizational Leadership & Talent Development

• Lead, develop, and inspire a geographically distributed organization of Solution Engineering Managers and Solution Engineers.
• Establish a high-performance culture focused on accountability, technical excellence, collaboration, inclusion, and continuous learning.
• Develop leadership bench strength through coaching, succession planning, manager development, and talent investment.
• Drive employee engagement, organizational health, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and retention strategies.
• Create career growth opportunities that strengthen both technical expertise and leadership capabilities across the organization.

Business Leadership & Strategy Execution

• Own technical strategy and execution across Cloud & AI Platform solution areas, including AI, Data, Infrastructure, Applications, Development Platforms, and Modernization.
• Partner with business leaders to define territory strategies, organizational priorities, resource allocation plans, and growth objectives.
• Support achievement of strategic business goals through technical engagement, customer influence, and solution adoption.
• Leverage business insights, customer trends, and market opportunities to shape organizational priorities and execution plans.
• Drive disciplined execution through clear accountability, performance management, and operational rigor.

Customer Impact & Executive Engagement

• Build trusted advisor relationships with CIOs, CTOs, Chief Data Officers, Chief AI Officers, and other senior customer decision makers.
• Help enterprise customers envision and execute cloud, data, and AI transformation strategies that deliver measurable business value.
• Engage directly in complex strategic opportunities, executive briefings, architecture reviews, and customer transformation programs.
• Guide teams in resolving technical blockers and accelerating customer decision making.
• Represent Microsoft as a senior technology leader with strategic customers, partners, and industry stakeholders.

Technical Leadership & Innovation

• Lead technical strategy supporting Azure, Microsoft Fabric, Azure AI, GitHub, Foundry, Intelligent Applications, Modern Infrastructure, Security, and Application Modernization solutions.
• Drive technical excellence across architecture design, solution envisioning, proofs of concept, demonstrations, and deployment planning.
• Ensure customer solutions are secure, scalable, resilient, and AI-ready.
• Foster innovation and adoption of emerging Microsoft technologies and AI-powered experiences.
• Deliver field insights that influence product direction, engineering priorities, and go-to-market strategy.

AI Transformation Leadership

• Champion Microsoft's vision for AI transformation and Frontier Firm enablement.
• Help customers accelerate adoption of generative AI, intelligent applications, copilots, agents, and data-driven business processes.
• Guide teams in helping customers build AI roadmaps aligned to business outcomes.
• Position Microsoft as the trusted platform for enterprise AI innovation and responsible AI implementation.
• Create organizational capability in rapidly evolving AI technologies and customer scenarios.

Partner & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Collaborate with Specialist Sellers, Customer Success Account Managers, Industry teams, Partner organizations, and Product Engineering.
• Ensure effective pod-based selling motions and seamless technical orchestration across solution areas.
• Drive strategic partner alignment that expands customer value and accelerates transformation outcomes.
• Help shape regional and national business strategies through thought leadership and field feedback.

Operational Excellence

• Manage organizational planning, headcount strategy, budget stewardship, workforce planning, and talent investments.
• Drive excellence in forecasting support, technical engagement quality, customer satisfaction, and business execution.
• Utilize data-driven insights and performance metrics to improve organizational effectiveness.
• Implement scalable processes and operational rhythms that increase consistency and impact across teams.
• Ensure effective governance, compliance, and execution against Microsoft business priorities.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business or related field AND 6+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 8+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR 10+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR equivalent experience.

Other 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

• 10+ years technical pre-sales, technical consulting, or technology delivery, or related experience OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years people management experience (including leading virtual teams).
• Experience driving business growth through cloud platform, AI, data, application modernization, infrastructure modernization, security, developer technologies, or digital transformation initiatives.
• Deep executive communication, presentation, and customer engagement skills.
• Proven track record partnering across sales, customer success, engineering, and partner ecosysems to influence technical and business decision makers across complex enterprise environments.
• Experience supporting large strategic enterprise customers and executive-level transformation initiatives.
• Passion for coaching, developing talent, and fostering a high-performance team.

Solution Engineering M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $155,800 - $277,200 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 $202,400 - $303,600 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

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

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.