Partner Technology Strategist

As a Partner Technology Strategist for Services partners, you are a trusted advisor and strategist for Microsoft’s most valued partners, driving innovations and aligning their goals with Microsoft’s priorities. Acting as the Microsoft Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to the partner, you influence technical stakeholders on the partner side, including Chief Technology Officers, Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Information Officers, and other senior leaders.

The Americas Global Partner Solutions (GPS) is focused on building the most profitable and impactful partner ecosystem in the world. We help our partners build innovative technical solutions, develop their technical skills & abilities, and successfully sell & deploy with our joint customers.

Curious and constantly learning, you stay ahead of industry trends to provide impactful guidance, thrive in ambiguity, and adapt quickly to change. Collaborating seamlessly across teams, you connect Partner Development Managers, Solution Architects, and field teams to deliver comprehensive solutions and ensure access to Microsoft’s full resources.

Your focus is on enabling technical readiness, co-creating innovative solutions, and driving co-sell success. By aligning technology with business outcomes, fostering impactful partnerships, and breaking down silos, you empower partners to bring secure, scalable, and transformative solutions to market. Together, we make bold visions achievable and create meaningful impact.

We stand in awe of what humans dare to achieve and are motivated every day to bring digital transformation to our partners. We help them empower their employees, engage their customers, optimize their operations, and change the very nature of their products, services, and business models. We are partner-obsessed – we love learning about them and then working with them to develop solutions that meet their needs.

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.

Responsibilities

Partner and Industry Insights

• Generates business insights based on engagement experience and proactive collaboration with the partner, internal teams, and industry, to conduct forecasting and develop recommendations for managing accounts and subsidiary planning. Challenges partners to consider alternative business models to meet business and market needs, and adapts plans to insights.
• Orchestrates teams to gather information, collaborate on performance markers, and identify potential risks in partner accounts. Brings in business and industry insights to address the broader business challenges for the partner and deliver solutions.

Trusted Advisor

• Acts as the voice of the partner and internal advocate by providing insights, feedback, and challenges from the partner to internal teams (e.g., product groups, engineers).
• Supplements existing technical decision maker (TDM) and/or business decision maker (BDM) relationships with additional ones at the C- and direct-report level by researching organization charts, identifying and contacting TDMs/BDMs, and beginning to advise on solutions and position Microsoft offerings.

Strategy Formulation

• Provides analysis of overall partner needs and advises on gaps that would benefit from Microsoft solutions, using an understanding of the business strategies and outcomes that technology can support; advises internal teams on how to identify and address gaps in order to drive end solutions.
• Ensures execution of technology strategy and/or digital transformation by identifying and resolving technical blockers that arise during strategy planning and implementation and driving technology adoption.
• Creates mid-term to long-term (e.g., 12 months plus) technical and business roadmaps for one or more accounts, outlining the digital transformation journey and core wins; drives and articulates business changes in the roadmaps around foundational, traditional capabilities. Builds technical engagement or enablement plan, captures baseline, and drives envisioning to support mid-term to long-term business plans.
• Demand Generation and Orchestration
• Orchestrates internal teams to ensure sufficient technical resources for demands, from a limited pool of resources, when appropriate.

Differentiated Value Proposition

• Creates and maintains a vision with business and technology solution scenarios and services that helps partners meet their business goals, achieve their long-term corporate vision, and maximize commercial success.
• Drives conversations that present the strategic relationship between Microsoft technologies, solutions/offers, products, and services compared with the competitor’s solution and the partner’s overall business goals and objectives.

Education and Thought Leadership

• Uses existing and new readiness resources to support enablement plans for partner technology adoption at the national and regional level. Contributes to innovations to accelerate meeting goals for partner capacity, maximize reach and impact and drive long-term engagement and thought leadership on the Microsoft platform.
• Provides strategic input to virtual team members (e.g., Account Team) using a thorough knowledge of Microsoft technologies, partner accounts, and digital transformations and their context in the competitive landscape.

Ensuring Success

Plays a key role in helping the partner and their customers be successful with digital transformation and Microsoft technology adoption by helping them realize the value, meet their business objectives, achieve their consumption and business targets, and accelerate growth. Works with others (may leverage the partner solutions architect [PSA]) to guide the development of partner technology roadmaps that enable them to expand into new markets and provides them with a competitive edge.

• Proactively orchestrates execution and monitoring of projects/programs in accordance with partner plan to develop solution offerings and value realization across a variety of solution areas. Sets timelines and milestones, and tracks progress toward objectives. Builds industry knowledge and establishes technical credibility with partners to drive the project agenda.

Solution Development

Secures commitment from critical or high-stakes partners to develop innovative and complex solutions using Microsoft technologies in collaboration with partner, and builds solutions into the partner ecosystem to enable partners to sell to end-customers.

Partner Enablement

• Helps partners build practices or solutions and shares their experience and influence with partners through solution-sales guidance; provides guidance to immediate team to ensure that technical pre-sales, deployment, and consumption are part of solution development efforts; anticipates partners’ technical blockers and executes a plan to divert blockers before they have the potential to occur.
• Other
• Embody our culture and values

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, business or related field AND 2+ years technical consulting, technical consultative selling, product development, or related technical/sales experience
• OR Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business or related field AND 1+ year(s) technical consulting, technical consultative selling, product development, or related technical/sales experience
• OR equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of industry/ Services and/or Pre-sales and/or Consulting experience within a Software as a Service (SaaS) organization.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business or related field AND 5+ years technical consulting, technical consultative selling, product development, or related technical/sales experience
• OR Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business or related field AND 3+ years technical consulting, technical consultative selling, product development, or related technical/sales experience
• OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years experience with relevant technologies (e.g., cloud, infrastructure, Microsoft platform).
• 5+ years of industry/ Services and/or Pre-sales and/or Consulting experience within a Software as a Service (SaaS) organization.
• 5+ years of product/program management experience preferably within a SaaS organization.
• Knowledge of technology services partner ecosystem.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.