Azure Infrastructure Architect, UK based remote/flexible working

We are looking for a certified Microsoft Azure Pre-Sales Infrastructure Architect for the Consultancy division of our client, an IT Services company. You will shape customer pre-sales opportunities and articulate business and technical strategy for our client’s customers and internal clients. It is a customer facing role and you’ll need proven skills in a customer facing position, and will be designing and assuring complex solutions to corporate or public sector organisations. This role is UK based, and will involve travel to client sites.
Our client align their Consultancy roles to the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA). They expect an Infrastructure Architect to operate at SFIA level 6 (Initiate & Influence).

The Role
• You will be responsible for influencing and shaping Microsoft Azure solutions during pre-sales engagements. To take advantage of this opportunity you will need to be a highly technical individual with solid hands on capability as a Technical Designer, Solution Lead or Architect with the ability to transform and enhance client vision and outcomes into a winning solution.
• Provide qualification of solutions approach and produce engagement documentation for internal and external consumption
• Provide thought leadership for, peers, the Practice, internal clients, our client’s customers and partners
• Provide opportunity-specific Technical Assurance, Quality Assurance, Governance & Customer
Satisfaction of pre and post sales consultancy engagements
• Responsible for building, maintaining and enhancing Consultancy delivery capability for a specific technical portfolio
• Host customer meetings to understand and articulate technical strategy and business impact for the company and customer
• Maintain an active and engaged technical community across the whole Practice in support of relevant area of expertise
• Maintain a high level of industry awareness through training and self-development, provide both market and technical evaluation of emerging technologies

The Ideal candidate:
• Has defined authority and accountability for actions and decisions within a significant area of work, including technical, financial and quality aspects.
• Establishes organisational objectives and assigns responsibilities.
• Initiates influential relationships with internal and external customers, suppliers and partners at senior management level, including industry leaders.
• Makes decisions which impact the work of employing organisations, achievement of organisational objectives and financial performance.
• Has a broad business understanding and deep understanding of own specialism(s).
• Performs highly complex work activities covering technical, financial and quality aspects.
• Creatively applies a wide range of technical and/or management principles.
• Is fully familiar with recognised industry bodies of knowledge both generic and specific.
• Actively seeks out new knowledge for own personal development and the mentoring or coaching of others.
• Develops a wider breadth of knowledge across the industry or business. Applies knowledge to help to define the standards which others will apply.
• Demonstrates clear leadership. Communicates effectively at all levels to both technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Understands and communicates industry developments, and the role and impact of technology in the employing organisation.
• Promotes compliance with relevant legislation and the need for services, products and working practices to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with diverse abilities.
• Takes the initiative to keep both own and colleagues' skills up to date.
• Takes a leading role in promoting security throughout own area of responsibilities and collectively in the organisations."
• Experience of successfully operating in the pre-sale’s environment in a Service or Consultancy organisation.
• Leading on the technology solution for RFI, RFP or bid responses delivering creative, engaging bid collateral.
• Solution design or enterprise architecture expertise delivering large scale technology projects.
• Proven experience of leading technically complex projects throughout the complete IT lifecycle.
• Proven experience in Digital Transformation, Enterprise Application Integration solutions, COTS based applications and bespoke application delivery
• Evidence of championing or leading on innovation
• Ideally you will be a Microsoft Certified Practitioner
• Leading workshops or assessments for customers to present our client’s joint Digital Power and Microsoft value and strategy.
• A strong influencer, with a wide range of styles, having ability to build good working relationships with delivery partners and all levels within the organisation
• You must be able to harness talent from across our client to generate solution collateral including reference architecture and high level technology patterns & designs which prioritise customer value
• Whilst technology must be a passion, so should the desire to improve our client’s services; contribution & ownership of standards and methods to build robust, repeatable, measurable practices will be central to this role
• Significant experience in positioning the business benefits of Microsoft Cloud Solutions into SMC and Enterprise, Commercial understanding of partner usage incentives
• Working closely with Microsoft Account Team to identity and utilise e-CIF, AMP and other funded initiatives applicable to driving our customers cloud journey.
• Work closely with our Azure Solution Lead and Sales Specialist(s) to help drive cloud migrations, envisioning, and optimisation services to capture margin, as well as provide savings to customers through pre-sales engagements.
Skills:
The candidate is familiar in the following base infrastructure concepts within Azure ·
• Azure IaaS, SaaS and PaaS
• Azure Managing Network and Applications ·
o Azure Logic Apps
o Azure Service Bus
o Azure API Management
o Azure Key Vault concepts
o Azure Resource Management (ARM) templates ·
• Azure Service Fabric or Kubernetes
• Azure Storage Solutions
• Must be familiar with Azure DevOps, execute Agile methodology within the tool ·
• Must be proficient with Source Code Version Control tools such as TFVC and Git ·
• Must be highly proficient with data standards like JSON and XML.
• Must be highly proficient in T Hashicorp Terraform & Vault, Ansible etc.
• Must be proficient in PowerShell and ARM templates
• Must be familiar with DevOps change management and philosophy
• Must be highly proficient with API design and development
• Must understand Microservices architectural style and design principles · Domain-driven design