Cloud Solutions Architect

Job Summary

The Azure Cloud Solutions Architect is a customer-facing pre-sales technical leader who identifies and qualifies Azure workload opportunities, designs differentiated NetApp and Microsoft solutions, and removes technical barriers to customer adoption. You will partner with sales, Microsoft, channel partners, Professional Services, and Customer Success teams to progress qualified opportunities toward measurable consumption and revenue outcomes. 

Key Responsibilities: 

• Own technical discovery, architecture, validation planning, technical close, and the quality of customer handovers. 
• Qualify customer opportunities, business and technical requirements, and solution fit for NetApp cloud offerings. 
• Design end-to-end Azure solutions that may include NetApp software, cloud services, Microsoft Azure services, and Professional Services. 
• Deliver discovery sessions, architecture workshops, technical demonstrations, immersion days, and customer or partner enablement. 
• Design and execute proofs of concept and technical blueprints that validate solution fit in the customer environment. 
• Act as the technical sales orchestrator, engaging specialists, Professional Services, Customer Success, product teams, partners, and Microsoft resources at the right stage. 
• Build trusted relationships with technical stakeholders, business decision makers, Microsoft teams, and channel partners. 
• Contribute to pipeline creation, forecast confidence, partner engagement, adoption, account growth, and expansion. 
• Transition successful customer wins to Professional Services and Customer Success with clear architecture and technical success plans. 
• Complete relevant training and certifications and contribute reusable assets, best practices, and field enablement.

Job Requirements

• Solid knowledge of public-cloud concepts and Microsoft Azure services, including networking, identity, security, governance, migration, and workload architecture. 
• Experience in a customer-facing technical role, with the ability to lead discovery, design solutions, and explain technical architecture and business value clearly. 
• Hands-on ability to plan and deliver technical demonstrations, workshops, proofs of concept, and deployment blueprints. 
• Technical understanding of enterprise file and data workloads, including NAS, NFS, SMB, and how applications consume file storage in Azure. 
• Consultative selling skills, including active listening, discovery, influencing, objection handling, negotiation, and creative problem-solving. 
• Ability to work independently and collaborate across account teams, specialists, partners, services, leadership, and customer-success resources. 
• Fluent French and strong professional English communication skills. 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Knowledge of the NetApp portfolio, including Azure NetApp Files, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, NetApp Console, data protection, and related services. 
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) or Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305). Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) is also valuable. 
• Working knowledge of backup, monitoring, tiering, APIs, automation, infrastructure as code, FinOps, and cloud economics. 
• Experience with one or more specialized workloads such as SAP, Oracle, Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure VMware Solution, Azure Kubernetes Service, high-performance computing, or AI and data platforms. 
• Understanding of resilience, business continuity, disaster recovery, observability, operational readiness, sovereignty, residency, regulatory requirements, and secure-by-design or Well-Architected Framework principles. 

What Success Looks Like: 

• Build quarterly pipeline through customer workshops, Microsoft and partner engagement, and internal enablement. 
• Advance qualified opportunities through effective technical validation, including proofs of concept and solution blueprints. 
• Maintain operational discipline through accurate SPARK hygiene, forecasting, MEDDICC execution, and high-quality handovers to Customer Success. 
• Drive account growth through new-to-service, new-workload, and cross-sell opportunities. 
• Model NetApp High Achievement Principles: Innovate to Elevate, Drive Results, and Excel as a Team.