Job Description: • 2-minute read •
Architect Managers are a key driving force of our Services organization. They manage a team of Architects, for whom they are responsible for driving sales & renewals in line with Microsoft Priorities, delivery excellence and governance of in-flight engagements, and have a fundamental role in people management to hire, grow and develop Architects.
Their mission is to ensure that all Architects in the team are successful in their role, that they proactively manage their engagement (presales and delivery) portfolio to drive a healthy business, achieving both customer satisfaction and agreed business results. They drive and actively support cross-team collaboration and joint delivery of successful customer opportunities, engagements and initiatives and, by successfully leading, enabling, and coaching/mentoring Architects, they ensure that these are successful at customers, and thereby drive a durable Microsoft architectural presence within our strategic customer accounts.
Architect Managers are mainly responsible for driving and completing the following activities:
People Management
o Deliver people management, governance and planning services to the team of Microsoft services Architects within their reporting line (manage teams of Architects only)
o Participate in Area resource and capacity planning processes, use conclusions to reskill or adjust Architect resource levels
o Drive onboarding and technical and professional role readiness across their team
o Manage ongoing career development for Architect role titles
o Conduct performance management; direct report meetings to direct, coach, assess impact, reward, and discipline o Perform talent acquisition to meet assigned headcount goals
Sales Management
o Create Account Plan with sales teams, identify target accounts, proceed with regular review of opportunities
o Support Subsidiaries/Area/Regional sales motions and value propositions, driving Sales and Services Teams to penetrate Microsoft accounts
o Prepare Architects for effective pre-sales with new customers, coach and drive opportunity development
o Plan and execute engagement renewals to ensure durable architectural presence
Delivery Excellence
o Effective practice leadership, showing executive maturity and building a high performing team
o Drive delivery of quality customer deliverables, incl. work orders, status reports and customer value reports
o Track customer satisfaction , ensuring initial customer expectations and conditions of satisfaction are set/met
Operations Management
o Cross-team orchestration and collaboration, including Sales, Operations, Finance, HR, Product Groups…
o Practice operations management, incl. utilization, bench size, profitability, people metrics, expenses…
o Ensure team and district/sub/area/region achieves EOY goals by tracking and driving KPIs such as sales, renewals, hiring, customer satisfaction…
How the Architect Manager Role is transforming
The Architect Manager is evolving, so as to enable the evolution of the Architect role: whilst the architect role tended to be more focused on product specialization, domain and/or industry knowledge, in the new era of "mobile-first, cloud-first", every architect needs to be able to articulate and synthesize across the megatrends, Microsoft's strategy and priorities, and demonstrate (1) how we help the customer get the most out of Microsoft technology, and (2) an understanding of what the specific change management issues are.
The role of the Architect Manager is to grow, develop, coach, mentor and lead the Architects he/she manages, in order to ensure that they successfully go through this transformation, and execute their mission according to this strategic focus. Continual focus must be on leading and coaching delivery teams whilst ensuring collaboration occurs at every step of the lifecycle. Architects in Services must be capable of maintaining executive presence and influence, coupled with excellent situational awareness, to ensure that our partnership with customers is visible at the C-level.
Key Discipline Results
Career Guide defines Key Results which are the expected outcomes within a discipline, and Competencies which are the behaviors that contribute to success across Microsoft. Key Discipline Results for Architect Managers are as follows:
Business to Technology Strategy: Translates business need to a technology implementation that satisfies customer/partner business goals, relationships, tactical choices, and strategic direction while aligning to Microsoft’s priorities and strategy.
Technology Delivery Management: Creates business value, reduces risk, and meets customer, partner, and Microsoft needs by developing and implementing practical, adoptable solutions through the use of existing IP, and established methods and frameworks.
Change Leadership and Adoption: Delivers and supports model solutions and relationships through practical new ideas, overcoming obstacles, and world-class execution, thus promoting and ensuring customer/partner adoption, business transformation, and ongoing loyalty.
Be a Services Role Model: Drives value, and supports the growth and success of customers, colleagues, and partners by intentionally, and continually sharing technical and business expertise.
Optimizing Business Results: Delivers predictable and planned business results in line with WW Services priorities. Recognizes and acts on potential opportunities to improve and grow customer/partner relationships.
Typical Characteristics and Traits
Architect Managers share a set of common characteristics and traits:
Integrity and honesty: Our Architect Managers communicate clearly and truthfully, earning their team’s trust through exemplar integrity.
Openness and respect: They drive an open dialogue, share information and knowledge quickly, and provide honest and useful feedback.
Passion for challenges: Architect Managers have a passion for taking on big challenges, they do what it takes to learn about our customers’ business and win it, and have often been in the Architect role themselves.
Accountability and willingness to relentlessly improve: They are experts at managing and delivering on expectations of customers as well as of internal partners, know when to delegate and constantly seek to improve themselves and the Architects they manage.
Experience required: Key Experience, Skills and Knowledge, Education:
15+ years of related IT experience and management experience.
Experience in business process, financial concepts and executive level interpersonal skills
Analytical problem solving
Building customer/partner relationships
Confidence
Cross-boundary collaboration
Impact and influence
Interpersonal awareness
Service project management
Strategy insights
Product &technology expertise
Value Selling
Bachelor’s Degree (B.S./B.A) required
Must have a combination of degree (Computer Science, social science or business), and equivalent work experience
Master’s degree preferred
MBA preferred
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