Strategic compete Solution Engineer Lead

Overview

Are you driven by innovation, endlessly curious about the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence, Data and cloud infrastructure and excited to solve complex challenges in a fast‑moving cloud environment? If so, we invite you to join our EMEA team as a Cloud & AI Solution Engineer Leader for commercial customers at Microsoft.

 You’ll operate at the forefront of next‑generation AI and cloud architectures—designing, building, and modernizing solutions that span advanced model serving, vector and document databases, distributed data processing, and high‑performance cloud‑native workloads. This role is ideal for professionals coming from other large‑scale cloud providers who have hands‑on experience with modern data platforms, fully managed analytics services, container‑based AI workflows, and end‑to‑end machine learning pipelines. You’ll apply that expertise to the Microsoft Cloud—helping customers accelerate their AI transformation with Azure’s portfolio of IaaS and PaaS data services.

 From scalable databases to real‑time analytics and intelligent applications, you’ll empower organizations to build, deploy, and operate AI‑driven solutions natively in the cloud.Join us and be part of a team that thrives on collaboration, creativity, and continuous learning—where your background with alternative cloud ecosystems becomes a strength that elevates customer impact.

Responsibilities

• Enable and upskill Solution Engineers across EMEA to confidently land Migrate & Modernise,  Data & AI solution plays and articulate the differentiated value of our cloud platform in competitive situations.
• Drive technical sales cycles with architects and decision makers, using immersive demos, hands‑on PoCs, and architectural guidance to shape solution decisions and accelerate production deployment.
• Lead high‑impact/high-compete technical engagements—architecture bootcamps, hackathons, migration accelerators—to fast‑track adoption of cloud‑native solutions, data, analytics, and AI services.
• Build trusted relationships with customer platform leaders, jointly designing secure, scalable, and cost‑optimized architectures tailored for frontier firms.
• Remove technical blockers and competitive objections, partnering closely with product engineering to provide feedback, influence roadmaps, and strengthen platform capabilities on Azure particularly differentiating against competitors.
• Maintain deep expertise across cloud, infrastructure, Data & AI in the context of competition, including unified analytics platforms, lakehouses, real‑time intelligence, governance, and operational/analytical databases supporting AI‑driven applications.
• Stay current on legacy and hybrid environments, including Sovereignty, to guide customers through modernization and migration journeys.
• Represent the company as a thought leader in compete knowledge and insights—speaking in communities, user groups, competitive situations, and executive forums to elevate the platform’s position in the market.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

·  Cloud Platform & Sovereignty Expertise: Understanding of cloud architecture patterns across global and regional providers, including sovereign cloud principles, data residency, regulatory constraints, and secure-by-default design for public sector & regulated industries.

·  Expertise in Cloud Databases: Strong experience with modern cloud database engines across relational and NoSQL stacks (SQL, document, key-value), including migration, performance tuning, and building new AI‑driven applications.

·  Advanced Analytics & Data Platforms: Proficiency with unified analytics platforms, large‑scale data warehouses, data lakes, big‑data processing frameworks, and real‑time analytics for intelligent reporting.

·  Security & Governance: Solid understanding of enterprise-grade governance models, data lineage, security controls, privacy-by-design, and compliant data management across distributed environments.

·  Leading Technical Engagements: Proven track record driving high‑impact technical projects: hackathons, PoCs, MVP builds, architecture deep dives, and guiding customers to successful production outcomes.

·  Technical Pre-Sales & Consulting: Experience supporting technical sales cycles, solution consulting, hands-on demos, competitive discussions, and advising customers on best practices and modernization paths.

·  Broad Data Ecosystem Knowledge: Familiar with legacy and hybrid analytics environments including on‑prem data warehouses, BI platforms, Hadoop ecosystems, streaming systems, and enterprise integration landscapes.

·  Strong Customer-facing Communication: Excellent ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly in English to technical and executive audiences.

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.