General Manager, Azure Data & AI

Key Skills

Azure, Data science techniques, Data Modeling, AI technology, Data Analytics

Job Description

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. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us to achieve our mission.

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 General Manager for the East Region Corporate Sales Data and AI organization within the US Small, Medium, and Corporate (SMC) customer segment 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 great sales & technical coach and leader, has a challenger mentality, is fluent in sales-leadership practice, has technical depth in Data and Analytics business and contributes with vision and flawless execution of solution and technical sales across different customer scenarios. As the Data and AI General Manager for the East Region you’d be accountable for and expected to embody:

Drive customer success through inspirational sales leadership 

• Inspire managers and individuals in the organization and foster a culture of customer-centricity, accountability, collaboration and achieving big bold goals
• Lead organization to drive new Digital Transformation projects through business outcome selling & expanding customer IT and Business connections
• Work closely with key, prioritized partners to expand the teams sales capabilities and reach in your area.

Provide technology thought leadership and coaching to Technical Managers

• Lead & coach technical specialist and managers to drive end-to-end business solutions across solution areas, increasing customer and partner satisfaction and average Azure consumption year over year
• Lead by example, personally engaging at CxO level to support and coach teams on charting a technical path for customer success
• Lead and drive as a role model the external agenda of all Data and Analytics Sales and Technical Leaders to build and influence the market

Growing share faster than competitors through best-in-class sales execution

• Ensure appropriate rolling quarter qualified pipeline in place to reach consumption targets: Specialist sellers directly responsible for closing cloud revenue and consumption, clear impact by technical specialist through owning customer technical decisions. 
• Consistent coaching rhythm in place, following sales & technical specialist manager coaching framework

Create clarity, generate energy, and deliver success through an impactful people and readiness agenda

• Increase workgroup health building an organization that is stronger tomorrow than today. Increase Area / Subsidiary capabilities aligned to our future market needs
• Develop a high-performance team by hiring diverse talent, prioritizing development, leading by example and by preparing people for more senior positions. 

Responsibilities

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 everyone’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

Sale Execution

• Brings impactful industry insights with partners into customer engagements.
• Leads with technical insights on how to grow customer business.
• Helps the team create vision for the customers and develop plans to drive sales. Leverages partners (e.g., Global System Integrators, Global Independent Software Vendor [ISV], industry) added value to increase customer outcomes.
• Acts as a thought leader in digital transformation across solution areas to advise customers and represent Microsoft, and coaches’ others internally on how to do this.
• Leads transformational shifts to drive deployment and create business value for customers.
• Leads a virtual cross-organizational team on strategic projects and high impact solution sales deployments that enable digital transformation and deliver business value.
• Lead partner integration into account/territory planning and customer engagements.
• Leads organization to drive new Digital Transformation projects (e.g., cloud platforms and services) through business outcome selling and expanding customer business decision maker (BDM) connections.
• Leads their team to identify and track new opportunities or engagements.
• Leverages stakeholders (e.g., account-aligned team unit, Consulting, Global Partner Solutions organization) to build pipeline within the territory.
• Coaches team members on interfacing with prospective customers to build network.
• Applies Microsoft's sales process (MSP) and Microsoft Consumption Process (MCP) to determine the quality of the opportunity/engagement and whether to proceed and educate the team on how to best address the customer needs.
• Enables the sales team to drive cloud businesses growth at or above targets and accelerate customer value realization through cloud services consumption across solution areas (e.g., modern workplace, apps and infrastructure, data and artificial intelligence [AI] and business applications, security, support). Reports progress to leadership and removes execution obstacles.
• Coaches their team to remove consumption blockers in pre-sales by collaborating with partners and other internal regional and global teams (e.g., Digital Win Room [DWR], FastTrack, Global Black Belts) and coaches their team how to engage customers to drive cloud services growth, support and consumption in accounts.
• Guides their team on communicating with customers, leveraging their business language, to understand their business needs and connect the need to Microsoft technology.
• In partnership with internal teams, reviews account strategies and plans in order to facilitate customer interactions to assess customer needs.
• Accelerates customer value realization through cloud services consumption across solution areas.
• Provides direction/guidance on the development of solutions across solution areas, including support.
• Coaches their team on identifying and engaging decision makers and stakeholders to expand the relationship with customers/partners.
• Engages C-Suite decision makers to support teams on opportunity discovery and acceleration while maintaining an external network.
• Participates in innovation circles. Represents their team internally at Microsoft as he/she engages internal stakeholders (e.g., Account Team Unit [ATU], Global Partner Solutions [GPS], Microsoft Customer and Partner Solution Area Leads, Global Black Belts).
• Leads their team to plan and execute strategies for driving and closing 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. Seeks alignment with all stakeholders and partners and guides team to work with internal stakeholders to remove blockers.

Technical Expertise

• Supports and coaches’ technical managers on setting customer’s technical roadmap
• Consistently drives excellence in upgrading the technical knowledge of Managers and sellers
• Exemplifies depth in Sales and Technical acumen together for a deeper impact to customers
• Deep understanding of technical trends in the industry with special focus on Data and Analytics to drive sales and technical productivity with managers and sellers
• Sets the bar on consumption plans across new and existing cloud workloads
• Provides insights and trends to internal parties
• Reviews wins/losses with the team to determine how to identify systematic and non-systematic issues to resolve.
• Develops strategies to position Microsoft products, solutions, and/or services (e.g., cloud services and platforms) against competitors.
• Initiates discussions to share industry trends and insights across the whole organization. Leverages deep technology knowledge and coaches team about Microsoft technology differentiators/competitive advantage.

Scaling Collaboration

• Guides their team to build a network of partners to cross-sell and up-sell and drive usage.
• Leads the team to identify new partners and evaluate partner capabilities.
• Facilitates the development of partner strategies and ensures execution.
• Provides input and feedback to Partner Organization on developing partner strategies and building partner capabilities to build and influence the market.
• Coaches the team to drive end-to-end business solutions across solution areas, resulting in increased partner satisfaction and partner deal sharing year-over-year.
• Leads by example to be executive sponsor for Global Independent Software Vendor (ISV) and Global System Integrators (GSIs) and drives sponsorship relationships for all of the Specialist Team Unit (STU) leadership team. Actively participates in the local Partner Governance Council and makes recommendations for Partner Recruitment and Partner Resource Allocation.
• Guides their team to apply the orchestration model with Account Team Unit (ATU), Partners, and Global Resources (e.g., Global Black Belts, FastTrack, Digital Win Room [DWR]).
• Establishes approach and practices to promote communication and collaboration across functions.
• Contributes to the development of the orchestration model and drives consistency across territories.

Sales Excellence

• Leads their team to explore business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and facilitate customer innovation to drive growth by leveraging technology, industry and partner expertise. Builds new market by leveraging deep technology expertise and resources.
• Proactively promotes development of deep and influential relationships with client contacts.
• Guides their team on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and facilitates the resolution of technical issues for strategic accounts.
• Establishes standards for customer/partner experiences. Ensures customers are made aware of new technological innovations.
• Drives and oversees integrated strategic planning to exceed cloud growth, drive consumption, and Support revenue and gain market share for the Solution Areas. Drives the integration of all local, regional and corporate resources (e.g., Digital, Global Black Belts, FastTrack) into the strategic plan. Discusses progress against plan in rhythm of business (ROB) meetings (e.g., Quarterly Business Connect [QBC], Virtual Solutions Unit [VSU]) and aligns the plans of their team across departments.
• Engages with executives to bring a more strategic perspective into the business plan.
• Guides their team regarding client performance, in whitespace analysis, and identifying potential new business in their assigned territories.
• Develops and aligns the analysis approach across the organization.
• Acts as a thought leader and clears opinions and perspectives from business analysis.
• Oversees the end-to-end business across geographical regions.
• Ensures their team meet targets (e.g., sales, usage, customer acquisition) and operational standards and maintains the health of metrics within the assigned subsidiary/area.
• 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. Seek additional learning opportunities and prioritize to enhance effectiveness.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years technical and sales experience

• OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, Analytics, Data Science, or related field AND 8 + years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years people management experience.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

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

• OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Analytics, Data Science, or related field AND 15+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, Analytics, Data Science, or related field AND 12+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR equivalent experience.
• 10+ years senior technical sales leadership experience in cloud services growth and consumption.
• 10+ years people management experience, including managing high performance sales and technical-specialist teams, coaching solution specialist and account development strategies, and/or leadership roles in multi-tiered large organizations.
• Deep technical and sales understanding of Data and Analytics solutions

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

Benefits and Perks

• Industry leading healthcare
• Savings and investments
• Giving programs
• Educational resources
• Maternity and paternity leave
• Opportunities to network and connect
• Discounts on products and services
• Generous time away