Senior Director - Azure Data & AI

In Small, Medium, Corporate (SMC) and Digital Sales, we have set out with the purpose to empower our customers through the unique value of the Microsoft cloud by building a globally led, digital-first scale organization aligned with partners. As part of local subsidiaries or Sales centers around the world, you will support a dedicated set of customers in identifying and achieving their business objectives through best-in-class digital engagement and partner co-selling. You will also have an opportunity to work cross-collaboratively while living our shared SMC and Digital Sales Culture priorities: Diversity and Inclusivity, Wellbeing, Sustainability, and Learning. If you have been described as customer obsessed and have a passion for digital-first solutions, we invite you to learn more about the SMC and Digital Sales organization and the value we deliver to our customers, partners, and one another, every day.

Microsoft envisions a world where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envisioning what can be and taking their careers places they simply couldn’t anywhere else. This is a world of more possibility, more innovation, more openness, and sky’s-the-limit thinking – a cloud-enabled world. The Microsoft Solutions Team positions the value of our best-in-class cloud services and platforms to enable enterprise customers to accelerate successful business outcomes of their digital transformation.

The Senior Director - Azure Data & AI, in the App Innovation Mid-Market team in Small, Medium and Corporate (SMC) leads an organization of Sales and Technical Leaders to provide and sell the best-in-class Solutions to our SMC customers, building the momentum of digital transformation for our Customers & Partners, backed-up with Customer aligned support offerings. The leader provides sales and technical thought leadership to accelerate our customers’ digital transformation. The person is a sales & technical coach and leader, has a challenger mentality, is fluent in sales-leadership practice, has technical depth in the Azure Infrastructure and App Innovation business and contributes with vision and flawless execution of solution and technical sales across different customer scenarios.

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.

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• 11+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 8+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience
• People management experience

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• 15+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience

OR Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology, or related field AND 12+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience

 OR Master's Degree in Business Administration (e.g., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND 10+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience

• 10+ years of services sales or account management experience.
• 7+ year(s) of people management experience.

Digital Solution Area Specialists M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $155,000 - $240,000 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 $202,500 - $263,300 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until January 23, 2025.

People Management

• Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
• Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
• Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
• Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

Sales Execution

• Brings impactful industry insights into customer engagements and closes deals with customers and coaches and influences others internally on how to do this. Influences Microsoft's strategic direction across various markets. Acts as a thought leader in digital transformation across solution areas to advise customers. Leads a virtual cross-organizational team to drive strategic projects and high-impact solution sales deployments that enable digital transformation and deliver business value. May lead partner integration into account/territory planning and customer engagements.
• Leads a team to support the account teams and drive conversations with strategic/high-potential customers. Facilitates stakeholders (e.g., account-aligned team unit) to build pipeline across territories. Sets best practices on social selling and guides others on how to do this, and drives consistency across domains/regions. Applies Microsoft's sales process (MSP) to determine the quality of the opportunity and whether to proceed, and educate the customers on how to best address their needs.
• Coaches their team to collaborate with partners and other internal teams (e.g., Technical Sales Professionals, global black belts [GBBs]). Leads with technical and industry insights on how to grow the strategic customer business, as well as anticipate and remove blockers to consumption across business functions.
• Guides their team on communicating with customers to understand their business needs or facilitates customer interactions to assess customer needs. Provides direction/guidance on the development of solutions across regions. Helps the team create vision for the customers and develop plans to drive sales.
• Coaches their team and/or other teams (e.g., account team units [ATUs]) on identifying and engaging decision makers and stakeholders to expand the relationship with customers/partners. Engages C-Suite decision makers for strategic customers to support teams on opportunity discovery and acceleration. Represents their team internally at Microsoft as they engages other internal stakeholders.
• Leads their team to develop strategies for driving and closing strategic (highly complex, high-value) opportunities. Drives the implementation of strategies and the collaboration with the account team to ensure alignment. Leads their team on ways to implement and share close plans (e.g., how to map timeline, engage the customer, get customer buy in and commitment) to de-risk and drive predictable deal closure.

Scaling and Collaboration

• Guides their team to build a network of partners to cross-sell, up-sell, and co-sell. Leads the team to identify new partners, evaluate partner capabilities, and sponsors on-boarding of new partners. Coaches the development of partner strategies and consumption plans, and ensures execution. Leverages global resources to help connect the partner ecosystems to form new market opportunities.
• Guides their team to apply the orchestration model. Establishes approach and practices to promote communication and collaboration across functions. Contributes to the development of the orchestration model and drives consistency across territories.

Technical Expertise

• Supports their team on participating in Microsoft events. Contributes to setting up the events and promoting best practice sharing across subsidiaries.
• Coaches their team on business and market knowledge. Develops strategies to position Microsoft products, solutions, and/or services against competitors. Initiates discussions to share industry trends and insights across the organization.

Sales Excellence

• Builds and transforms new markets by leveraging technical and industry expertise, partners, and resources. Leads a team to explore business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and facilitate customer innovation.
• Lays out customer satisfaction long-term strategies. Proactively promotes development of deep and influential relationships with client contacts. Guides their team on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and facilitates the resolution of sales/delivery issues for strategic accounts. Establishes standards for customer/partner experiences.
• Participates in regular strategic planning for their assigned territory. Review plans via rhythm-of-business (ROB) meetings and aligns the plans of their team across departments. Guides team to align their approach with sales excellence team. Engages with external executives to bring a more strategic perspective into the planning portion of account planning.
• Guides their team in whitespace analysis and supports the team to identify potential business in the assigned territory. Develops and aligns the analysis approach across the organization. Acts as a thought leader and validates opinions and perspectives from business analysis.
• Oversees the end-to-end business across geographical regions. Ensures their team meet sales targets and operational standards and maintains the health of metrics within the assigned territory. Interacts with Corporate leadership and executive-level stakeholders to get support for their team and the geographical regions.
• Completes required training and obtains relevant product and role certifications aligned to the role and workload/industry. Mentors/coaches the team on growing knowledge on sales or products and ensures the team complete training and obtain certifications as required.

Other

• Embody our culture and values