Overview

As a Solution Specialist Manager, in the STU Japan's Cloud & AI platformOrganization, who is passionate about driving our customers’ Cloud adoption and AI transformation on the Microsoft Azure Platforms, you will own the solution relationship between the customer and Microsoft. This opportunity, which is customer-facing team leader, will allow you to help customers to leverage their Microsoft investments through architecture, implementation, and operational health engagements. This role is responsible for leading cloud- and AI-driven transformation for customers within the infrastructure services sector, including Real Estae, IT service provider and managed operations.

Responsibilities

1. Team Leadership & People Management

Align the team with the organization’s vision and Customer Success priorities.
Lead hiring, development, coaching, and performance management to build a high-performing team.
Strengthen capabilities required for the Infrastructure Services domain and support professional growth.
Coach and Enable team to win the Cloud Market: Coach the team to compete to win new Azure projects through outcome selling, customer focused, sales motions

2. Market Insights & Competitive Strategy

Consistently driving accelerated revenue growth across cloud technical decisions in the given customer set.
Demonstrate strong business value and Cloud Economics knowledge, empowering specialists to win new projects aligned to Azure Sales Priorities.
Owns the overall tone of a customer centric approach by supporting specialists in landing holistic Migration & Modernization, Unify data platform and AI &AI agent development.

3. Pipeline Management & Forecast Accuracy

Work with area leaders to establish accurate deal-based forecasting across infrastructure-related opportunities.
Maintain healthy pipelines in Azure infrastructure pillars (Compute, Storage, Networking, Identity, Hybrid, Security).
Utilize AI-powered analytics and forecasting tools to enhance decision-making accuracy.
Drive Sales Leadership and best practices sharing

4. Partner Ecosystem Engagement

Build strong collaboration models with SI partners, ISVs.
Expand market opportunities through joint selling and solution co-creation.
Gather customer and partner feedback and provide insights to refine solution strategy.

5. Operational Excellence & Cross-Organizational Coordination

Enhance operational rigor and governance across sales motions.
Manage opportunity risks, partner delivery readiness, and cost optimization within complex infrastructure engagements.
Improve rhythms, communication processes, and execution alignment across the organization

6. Compliance

Integrity and ethical behaviors modeled every day with consistent advocacy for the importance of advancing a culture of compliance. Healthy team culture in which employees prioritize adherence to policies and processes and feel recognized for making ethical choices and sharing concerns. Connects are leveraged to document impact and improvement areas.
Managers ensure teams’ adherence to policies and processes and 100% required compliance trainings completed by due date.
Active support for controls, review processes and investigations through effective remediation of control failures.
Proactive identification of risks relevant for team operations and timely escalation of concerns.

Qualifications

Required / minimum qualifications

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Information Security, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Substantial, proven experience in cloud technology-related sales or account team management, with a strong record of driving revenue, managing complex customer relationships, and influencing senior stakeholders.

Additional / preferred qualifications

Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA), Information Technology, Information Security, or a related field, or equivalent advanced experience.
Deep, progressively senior experience in cloud technology-related sales or account management, ideally including ownership of large, strategic accounts and complex deal cycles.
Significant solution- or services-led sales experience, demonstrating the ability to shape customer strategy, orchestrate virtual teams, and land end-to-end cloud and AI solutions.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

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.

Solution Area Specialists Manager (Azure)