Technology Specialist - Innovation Hub Lead at Microsoft

• This role has people management responsibilities including driving employee growth and development, executing projects, and managing performance.
• Proactively identifies and engages with key customer technical decision makers and influencers while engaging sales team. Uses knowledge to build credibility with customers.
• Enables and empowers team to influence customer decisions and ensure technical wins by streamlining processes and managing the flow of wins, leveraging deep knowledge of processes.
• Leverages knowledge of resources.
• Ensures consistency and quality through capturing, sharing, and adherence of standards and best practices in customer engagements by implementing cross-functional initiatives to different channels across a subsidiary to drive consistency in technical approach and ensure customer technical experience across teams.
• Orchestrates team resources and coaches team to maximize impact of customer engagements and drive mid-to long-term strategy through cross-workload capacity planning, prioritization, and utilization of resources.
• Maximizes area-level capacity and capabilities by coaching team to grow partner network, identifying gaps and promoting Microsoft within the Microsoft ecosystem. Supports partner technical capacity by monitoring and analyzing resources through interactions, communicating with managers, and identifying new partnership opportunities to build subsidiary strategy.
• Coaches and provides support to team and across internal teams to define and execute strategy.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business or related field AND 4+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 6+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
  • OR 7+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience OR equivalent experience.

Additional or preferred qualifications

• 3+ years people management experience (including leading virtual teams).
• 6+ years experience with cloud and hybrid, or on premises infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, industry standards, and/or technology management.
• 8+ years technical pre-sales, technical consulting, or technology delivery, or related experience OR equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

Build Strategy

• Builds competitive knowledge of team by enabling competitive learning and identifying experts to share knowledge. Enables team to share compete knowledge with internal teams and communities, influence compete strategies, and highlight Microsoft advantages during architecture and capability discussions. Acts as a subject matter expert on a particular competitive discipline(s).
• Maintains communications with internal partners (e.g., Account Technology Unit [ATU], Customer Service Unit [CSU] manager, SSM) on highest potential customers to pre-align technical resources to customer and customer cases based on account planning and priorities, with the flexibility to realign to minimize orchestration and enable proactive engagements as needed.
• Coaches and provides support to team and across internal teams to define and execute strategy. Proactively approaches customers to understand and identify cross-workload strategy opportunities. Engages internal teams to ensure capability to execute strategy.
• Works with local marketing and account teams to shape strategic win and customer success plans and tailor to audience for the local markets using knowledge of Microsoft offerings, their context in the competitive landscape, and broader market trends. Ensures team is equipped to execute compete strategy, collaborating with cross-functional groups as needed. Where applicable, oversees team(s) in the building of consumption plans with moderately complex requirements in coordination with Partner and Industry Solutions Delivery teams after customer sign-off.

Education

• Ensures team members participate in tech communities and drives feedback to improve overall team member experience and effectiveness at subsidiary level.
• Acts as a technical thought leader by sharing best practices (e.g., architectures, materials) and regularly delivering content at Microsoft events (e.g., TechReady). Provides insight into how to identify opportunities to increase solutions/portfolio understanding.
• Enables and empowers team to develop technical expertise and provide technical insights to internal teams. Acts as a role model by increasing own technical knowledge and serving as a respected technology leader to team. Provides insight onto Corporate, business and product groups, sales strategy, and business reviews for impact.

Leverage Partner Ecosystem

• Supports partner technical capacity by monitoring and analyzing resources through interactions, communicating with managers, and identifying new partnership opportunities to build subsidiary strategy.
• Maximizes area-level capacity and capabilities by coaching team to grow partner network, identifying gaps and promoting Microsoft within the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., account teams). Raises escalations or alleviates blockers through collaboration with manager-level counterparts in cross-functional groups.

Scale Customer Engagements

• Proactively identifies and engages with key customer technical decision makers and influencers while engaging sales team. Coaches and enables team to identify and proactively engage with key customer technical decision makers and influencers to help unblock technical obstacles.
• Enables and empowers team to influence customer decisions and ensure technical wins by streamlining processes and managing the flow of wins, leveraging deep knowledge of processes (e.g., Managed Service Provider [MSP], Managed Certified Professional [MCP]), tools, and programs (e.g., FastTrack, End Customer Investment Funds [ECIFs]). Aligns goals across solution areas and facilitates cross-selling with various workloads (e.g., Apps, Data and Infrastructure)
• Leverages knowledge of resources (e.g., roles, Microsoft Technology Center [MTC], demo sites, virtual sites, Value Based Delivery [VBD], Customer Success Unit [CSU]) and owns resolution of technical and non-technical blockers by engaging other teams (e.g., engineering, Account Team Unit [ATU], Specialist Team Unit [STU]) and conveying impact. Anticipates and addresses future potential blockers based on needs. Identifies patterns of blockers within area of expertise and drives resolution through local and global escalation.
• Uses knowledge of customer context, and deep technical, domain, and industry knowledge to build credibility with customers.
• Ensures consistency and quality through capturing, sharing, and adherence of standards and best practices in customer engagements by implementing cross-functional initiatives to different channels across a subsidiary to drive consistency in technical approach and ensure customer technical experience across teams.
• Orchestrates team resources and coaches team to maximize impact of customer engagements and drive mid-to long-term strategy through cross-workload capacity planning, prioritization, and utilization of resources. Proactively plans team resources and influences future blueprints. Qualifies and prioritizes opportunities, and holds team accountable for maximizing selling time to achieve scorecard objectives and subsidiary strategy.

Solution Design and Proof

• Applies advanced sales methodologies (e.g., challenger sales) and coaches team in guiding customers through digital transformation solutions and using innovation to challenge solutions against changing technology (e.g., Power Apps).
• Identifies new technical and business trends and needs, and identifies ideas that can be transformed into solutions that benefit customers/partners, serving as the voice of the customer (VOC) to Microsoft. Ensures input is utilized and solutions for the customer are established at the area level.
• Coaches team and oversees demonstrations (e.g., architectural design sessions, and proof of concept [POC] sessions, pilots, hackathons) of solutions based on multiple products and position solutions against competitors. Ensures demonstrations enable customers to identify and resolve technical issues with clear criteria and next steps that guarantee deployment of Microsoft technology.
• Promotes adaptation and extension of architecture patterns to accommodate complex customer requirements and drive integration solutions for industry flavor.
• Coaches team to envision new and innovative solutions that use Microsoft technology to meet customer needs. Supports team in coordinating with stakeholders to develop solutions for complex sales scenarios. Ensures team capability to execute on those solutions.

Core Priorities of the Role 

• People Management of Africa Technical Specialists and Innovation Hub team
• Customer engagements at Innovation Hub & Africa customer. 
• Build and Execute Strategy - Solutions areas + Innovation Hub
• Build Community of Technical Specialist across Arica