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.

We are seeking a Digital & Application Innovation Specialist to join our team!

As a Digital & Application Innovation Specialist, you will be a solution sales leader within our enterprise sales organization working with our most important customers selling the entire Microsoft “Apps” portfolio, including (but not limited to): Azure Application Services (Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, Application Service Environment, Service Bus, etc.), PowerApps, GitHub and Visual Studio. You will lead the orchestration of a virtual team of Cloud Solution Architects, partners, and other resources to advance the sales process and achieve/exceed sales and usage/consumption targets for Azure Application Innovation related workloads in your assigned accounts. You will be a trusted advisor and a cloud application development subject matter expert.

This is a unique opportunity to lead engagement in highly competitive, cloud native giants across Canada and execute Microsoft cloud deals that drive significant publicity, competitive share, and revenue for Microsoft through Azure, the Microsoft Cloud. This role has the potential to steer the engagement and partnership strategy of Microsoft’s cloud offerings through unique, creative, and competitive pursuits that will challenge and build Microsoft’s next generation cloud growth strategy.

The selected candidate for this role will have a background in software development consulting and/or selling custom software solutions and have a deep understanding of cloud native architecture, and development processes. This person loves helping customers understand the art of the possible using modern software services and technologies, stays on top of the latest trends and quickly establishes themselves as a trusted advisor at the founder level.

Responsibilities

Create “buy-in” vision with the Apps Decision Makers

• Take active role in defining and influencing the customer’s business challenges and opportunities.
• Understand the financial, qualitative and competitive drivers impacting customer business.
• Create “buy-in” vision and gain sponsorship by generating excitement around Microsoft solutions value.
  
  

Map out customer’s current and desired state and expectations

• Identify customer’s digital transformation needs, business drivers, their perspective, and concerns.
• Collaborate effectively with the customers to outline their business problems, opportunities.
• Establish and understand the buying decision criteria and timeline to make decision regarding the solution.
• Establish credibility and trust by demonstrating that Microsoft solutions not only solve customer business problems but also the value they realized.
  
  

Lead the solution design by assembling and orchestrating Sales & technical resources.

• Proficient in delivering Microsoft Apps vision, strategy, value to C-level and Apps Decision Makers
• Orchestrate the technical experts to create the solution, validate it via Proof of Concept, and showcase how it meets customer business and technology requirements.
• Able to handle customer objections and competitive differentiation.
  
  

Substantiate the value of the solution (commercial discussion)

• Building business cases with TCO analysis and negotiate a deal that’s based on value by leveraging various MS offers and programs.
• Secure customer commitment for the business proposal.
  
  

Drive Sales Excellence

• Drive the App Innovation business to overachieve revenue, consumption and scorecard targets.
• Maintain excellence in pipeline management, accuracy of sales forecast, and deal close plans.
  
  

Lead with subject matter expertise and be the Voice of the customer.

• Influence the Microsoft Application Innovation go to market strategies by providing feedback to sales, marketing, and engineering on product requirements and sales blockers.
• Stay sharp, attaining and maintaining required certifications. We encourage all our employees to continuously maintain and enhance their technical, sales, professional skills and competitive readiness. You will be recognized for sharing, learning and driving individual work that all result in business impact for customers, partners and within Microsoft. We encourage thought leadership and leadership from every employee
  
  

Other

• Embody our culture and values
  
  

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 6+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.
  

Additional Or Preferred Qualifications

9+ years technology-related sales or account management experience

• OR Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology, or related field AND 8+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Master's Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND 5+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.

6+ years solution or services sales experience.

Experience with selling cloud services or application development services to large/global enterprise customers with a focus on cloud application development

Effective territory/account management: planning, opportunity qualification and creation, stakeholder and executive communication, needs analysis, services/partner engagement, opportunity management and pipeline management

Experience and expertise selling to LOB decision makers, technical decision makers & enterprise solution architects by aligning & reinforcing the value of the solution to the customer’s overall business pain and/or strategic opportunities and decision criteria

Ability to solve customer problems through cloud technologies, specifically solutions related to cloud native apps – containers & serverless, microservices, developer tools and DevOps, low code, migration to cloud

Orchestrate and influence virtual teams to pursue sales opportunities and lead v-teams through influence

Previous experience developing or architecting enterprise software solutions.

Understanding of Data & AI technologies in context of app development (e.g. SQL and NoSQL Databases, Big Data, Cognitive Service, Machine Learning etc.).

Knowledge of cloud development platforms and their adoption.

Experience with one or more of the following technologies is preferred but not required:

• Past application development experience such as Java, JavaScript, Python, PHP, C# or Node.JS.
• Past application development experience in public clouds: Azure, AWS, GCP, etc.
• Scalable architectures using Azure App Service, API management, serverless technologies, container orchestration (e.g. AKS, Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift etc.), microservice frameworks etc.
• Software development practices like DevOps and CI/CD tool chains (i.e. Jenkins, Spinnaker, Azure DevOps, GitHub).
• Understanding of Low code platform and technologies such as Power Platform.
• Understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs.
  
  

Solution Area Specialists IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across Canada is CAD $141,000 - CAD $212,000 per year.

Find additional pay information here: Canada pay information | Microsoft Careers

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until September 20, 2024.

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.