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.**Microsoft Federal delivers a single unified organization centered around our customer:** All critical customer functions are brought under the same organizational umbrella. Bringing together the breadth and depth in our space with a razor sharp focus on serving the US Government. Our federal customers' expectations of how to contract, interact, and partner with us are changing, and they need to evolve at the pace of the private sector. Launching a nimble, empowered organization with comprehensive resources allows us to work hand in hand with our customers to accelerate their technology innovation, whether through R or through direct contracting.Microsoft Federal serves the US Government (USG), allowing Microsoft to support the growing government business. The organization supports the capabilities and requirements to service USG through direct sales, contracting, and billing with the USG. Microsoft Federal entity will meet obligations of manage contracts with the USG through six business teams and three enablement teams.We are committed to **empowering our teams** , building upon our strategic investments, and delivering the technology to achieve federal missions. As our federal customers pursue their work, from defending the nation, to serving its citizens in challenging times, they look to Microsoft to help them innovate, and they expect end-to-end engagement tailored to their needs.Microsoft has been committed to and continues to heavily invest in supporting our Federal Government. Microsoft Federal offers our full spectrum of products and services, including hardware, software, online products, and consulting and services.Microsoft Services helps our government customers realize their full potential through accelerated adoption and productive use of Microsoft technologies. We are a team of exceptional people who deliver best-in-class services with partners while earning customer confidence and trust. We are dedicated to improving the overall customer experience, serving as the customer advocates within Microsoft and driving customer-centric product improvement.Are you a continuous learner with a fervent desire to help guide us with a growth mindset? A great teammate focused on digital transformation? If so, our team is seeking a Cloud Solution Architect specializing in Azure Infrastructure who has embraced the future. This role will capitalize on your desire to accept greater challenge, accomplish tasks through others and overcome our customer's greatest challenges as they move into our cloud solutions and experience the efficiencies and success within that space.**Join us and be one who helps to empower the US government!** _That's incredible_ **_reach_** _. When you combine that with your own_ **_inspiration_** _, plus the_ **_freedom_** _and support to make your ideas happen, you can make a huge_ **_impact._ Responsibilities**Key responsibilities include:+ Understanding customers' overall applications portfolio, IT and business priorities and success measures to design implementation architectures and solutions (Microsoft and 3rd party solutions) using PaaS, DevOps & Advanced Application coding+ Apply technical knowledge and customer insights to create a modernization roadmap. Architect solutions to meet business and IT needs, ensuring technical viability of new projects and successful deployments, while orchestrating key resources and infusing key Infrastructure technologies (eg Windows and Linux IaaS, Security, Networking, etc.), and Application Development and DevOps technologies (eg App Service, containers, serverless, cloud native, etc.) as appropriate+ Ensure all solutions exhibit high levels of performance, security, scalability, maintainability, and appropriate reusability and reliability upon deployment+ Develop deep relationships with key customer IT decision makers, who drive long-term cloud adoption within their company to enable them to be cloud advocates+ Be the Voice of the Customer; Share insights and best practices, and connect with Engineering teams to remove key blockers+ Assess the Customers' knowledge of Azure platform and overall cloud readiness to support customers through a structured learning plan and ensure its delivery through partners+ Collaborate with other Cloud Solution Architects in developing complex end-to-end Enterprise solutions on the Microsoft Azure platform+ Maintain technical skills and knowledge of market trends and competitive insights; collaborate and share with the technical community+ Be an Azure Platform evangelist with customers, partners and external communities**Qualifications**Professional:+ Experience. 5+ years of success in consultative/complex technical sales and deployment projects, architecture, design, implementation, and/or support of highly distributed applications required+ Relationship Building. Proven track record of building deep technical relationships with senior IT executives in large or highly strategic accounts. Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solution/projects required+ Problem Solving. Ability to solve customer problems through cloud technologies required+ Collaboration and Communication. Acknowledged for driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts and ensuring follow through with exceptional verbal and written communication skills. Ability to orchestrate, lead, and influence virtual teams, ensuring successful implementation of customer projects. Presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences (Senior Executives, IT management, Database administrators and Data Scientist) requiredEducation:+ Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineer or related field preferred+ Certification in one of the following technologies preferred: Cloud, mobile, web application development, cloud-native application architecture (ie containers, microservices, API management), modern software development techniques like DevOps and CI/CD tool chains (ie Jenkins, Spinnaker, Azure developer services, GitHub) and container orchestration systems (ie Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, Azure Kubernetes Service, GitHub)Experiences:+ Prior work experience in a Consulting/Architecture position within a software and/or services company such as Amazon, VMware, Google, IBM, Oracle preferredLocation: Washington DC area preferred. Travel ranges from 25-50% depending on location and assignments.Citizenship Verification: The successful candidate must be a US Citizen. This position requires verification of US Citizenship to meet federal government security requirements.The successful candidate must have an active US Government Top Secret Clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) based on a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) with Polygraph. Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate US Government clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.Cloud Screening: Candidates must be able to successfully complete and pass a Microsoft Cloud background screening. Required Cloud Screenings will be administered on a recurring bi-annual basis.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 (https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/accommodationrequest) .Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.