Director, Solution Engineering, Enterprise Digital Natives

Overview

The Digital Natives organization at Microsoft is one of the fastest-growing, most dynamic, and most innovative teams in the company—operating with startup agility inside a global Cloud and AI leader. We partner with the world’s most disruptive, venture-backed startups and high-growth digital natives building frontier AI, next-generation SaaS platforms, and cloud-native products.

We are hiring a Director, Solution Engineering, Enterprise Digital Natives to lead a high-performing team of Solution Engineers who build Azure-powered solutions, design end-to-end technical approaches, run deep technical engagements, and shape the cloud strategy for some of Microsoft’s most strategic AI-native customers.

This leader will coach Solution Engineers who thrive in ambiguity, love solving complex technical challenges, and operate with an entrepreneurial mindset. You’ll guide the team through technical design, customer engagement, proofs of concept, cloud adoption planning, and cross-functional orchestration with engineering, product, partner, and field teams.

This is a high-visibility role with executive sponsorship, offering a career-defining opportunity to influence Microsoft’s position in the startup and AI ecosystems while developing the next generation of technical leaders.

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.

Responsibilities

People Leadership

Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring:

Model: Live Microsoft’s culture and values. Bring clarity, energy, and a growth mindset.
Coach: Set clear objectives, guide technical excellence, foster collaboration across teams, and support ongoing skill development across cloud, AI, open-source, and engineering disciplines.
Care: Recruit, develop, and retain exceptional Solution Engineers; understand their strengths and aspirations; and invest deeply in their growth and career paths.

Technical Strategy & Vision

Serve as the technical thought leader for the Solution Engineering team—bringing deep cloud, AI, data, application, and industry insight into customer engagements.
Shape technical strategy for high-growth Digital Native accounts, helping engineers build forward-thinking, scalable, secure, and cost-efficient solutions on Azure.
Guide engineers in creating solution designs, cloud modernization approaches, AI innovation patterns, and technical roadmaps tailored to startup velocity and constraints.
Identify emerging technologies (AI/ML, distributed systems, open-source frameworks, containers/K8s, cost optimization) and teach the team how to apply them to real customer scenarios.

Customer & Deal Acceleration

Coach Solution Engineers to proactively engage CTOs, founders, engineering leaders, and technical decision-makers—building credibility through deep technical understanding.
Partner with Pursuit Account Executives to accelerate deals by integrating solution design, competitive strategy, and technical proof points into customer engagements.
Lead the technical strategy for complex opportunities, orchestrating multi-workload and multi-team efforts while ensuring clarity on dependencies, blockers, and timelines.
Manage escalations by working directly with engineering, product teams, the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC), and partners to resolve technical hurdles quickly.

Scale, Orchestration & Collaboration

Promote a culture of One Microsoft orchestration, ensuring Solution Engineers work effectively with Engineering, CSU, STU, GBBs, Product, Marketing, and Partner teams.
Empower engineers to run high-impact technical activities—design sessions, solution demos, proofs of concept, hackathons, pilots, and production readiness reviews.
Ensure the team utilizes programs such as FastTrack,and partner-led delivery to scale customer impact.
Represent the Solution Engineering team internally and externally, advocating for customer needs and influencing internal roadmaps and priorities.

Technical Excellence & Engineering Culture

Act as a spokesperson for Microsoft Cloud at industry events, roundtables, and technical community forums.
Coach the team to stay deeply current on Azure, AI/ML, application modernization, open-source technologies, DevOps, data platforms, and cloud-native development.
Drive the creation and use of reusable engineering assets, solution patterns, and repeatable frameworks.
Cultivate an engineering culture of curiosity, experimentation, rigor, and high standards—fostered through community sessions, technical deep dives, hackathons, and peer reviews.

Customer Success & Sales Excellence

Ensure Solution Engineers drive customer success across architecture design, build, migration, optimization, and ongoing innovation.
Align technical engagement with account planning, whitespace analysis, and territory strategy.
Maintain operational excellence across forecasting, prioritization, resource allocation, and pipeline planning.

Guide the team toward measurable outcomes including Azure consumption, successful deployments, customer satisfaction, and strategic workload wins.

Other

Embody our Culture and Values

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business or related field AND 4+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 6+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
OR 7+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
OR equivalent experience.

Other Requirements

This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Candidates must have authorization to work in the United States that does not now or in teh future require employer sponsorship.

Additional Or Preferred Qualifications

6+ years solution or services sales experience.
3+ years people management experience.
3+ years sales experience working within the high-growth start-up ecosystem.
Experience in building long-term commercial agreements that deal with ambiguities and dynamic business changes while minimizing risk.

Solution Engineering M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $130,900 - $251,900 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $165,600 - $272,300 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

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.