Chief Cloud & AI Platform Architect in London

Overview

Step into a role where your expertise shapes the technology strategy for some of the UK’s most ambitious enterprises. This role sits in the Sales organisation and is focused on our largest customers who have made commercial commitments to Azure. As a senior technical leader and Azure strategic expert, you’ll be responsible for driving delivery excellence, technical innovation, and strategic execution across large and complex Azure and AI engagements. In this pivotal Chief Architect position, you’ll partner directly with C-level executives and senior stakeholders to align technology with business objectives—ensuring security, resilience, and performance at every level. If you’re passionate about making a measurable impact and leading cloud transformation at the highest level, this is your opportunity to shine.

With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. We drive cross-company alignment and execution, ensuring that we consistently exceed customers’ expectations in every interaction, whether in-product, digital, or human-centered. CE&S is responsible for all up services across the company, including consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft’s portfolio of solutions and products. Join CE&S and help us accelerate AI transformation for our customers and the world.

Responsibilities

We’re seeking a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) with deep expertise across Azure workloads, including AI, Applications, Infrastructure, and Data, who is passionate about solving complex challenges and helping enterprise customers accelerate their digital transformation. In this senior, customer-facing role, you’ll lead strategic technical engagements, advise C-level executives, and partner with Customer Success Leaders to shape and execute cloud strategies that drive innovation and business value. You’ll guide customers through architecture design, deployment, and operational excellence, helping them scale AI solutions, modernize applications, and optimize infrastructure on Microsoft Azure. This is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact by enabling customers to realize the full potential of the cloud.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Qualifications

• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior leaders and executives (e.g., CTO, CIO) at large enterprise customers, helping define and execute transformative Cloud & AI strategies.
• Providing technical vision and leadership for complex, high-impact projects.
• Proactively using expert knowledge in customer conversations to influence solutions and drive consumption.
• Lead and accelerate Azure consumption plans, ensuring alignment to customer success.
• Inspire customer innovation by helping them adopt AI at scale, guiding them through their transformation journey with confidence and clarity.
• Anticipate and resolve critical business and technical challenges to accelerate value realisation.
• Lead architectural design workshops and oversee the implementation and quality assurance of secure, scalable, and resilient end-to-end solutions, leveraging Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), Well-Architected Framework (WAF), and best practices to optimize mission-critical workloads.
• Collaborate with account teams and leadership to support account planning, deal creation, and execution of consumption and customer success plans.
• Share responsibility for Azure and Unified Health within accounts, supporting expansion, renewal, and next-best workload motions.
• Demonstrate mastery across AI applications, infrastructure, and data, enabling production-scale AI use cases.
• Stay ahead of the curve by maintaining advanced certifications and deep technical expertise across priority workloads such as Azure AI Foundry, GitHub, App Services, Databricks, Fabric, and more.
• Demonstrate a growth mindset by continuously developing your skills, aligning with business priorities, and contributing to a culture of learning and excellence.
• Mentor and upskill the technical community fostering a culture of learning and innovation. This includes acting as a spokesperson and thought leader both internally and externally.

Required Qualifications (RQs)

• Ability to secure up to UK DV security clearance.
• Strong leadership and communication skills, with experience engaging at the C-suite level.
• Demonstrated ability to drive technical strategy, optimise cloud consumption, and deliver measurable business outcomes.
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 12+ years experience in cloud technologies, information technology (IT) consulting/support, systems administration, network operations, software development/support, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications (PQs)

• 8+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
• 8+ years experience working on technical projects.
• Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications).

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.