As a Technical Sales Specialist - AI App Dev, you will be a member of the Global Black Belt (GBB) team, working as a Technology Specialist specializing in AI Application Development. You will be a technical solution expert within our worldwide AI commercial solution area organization working with strategic customers on developing AI projects. You will accelerate and scale Microsoft’s share of the AI market leveraging the latest front and back-end development technologies to implement Azure AI, Azure Cognitive Services and Azure ML led solutions within prototype applications. The primary objective is to support our AI Specialists with prototyping and developing AI-powered application experience to demonstrate the value of AI within customer organizations and win the technical decision for progressing to production initiatives. You will combine the power of the Azure Data and Apps portfolio with Azure AI to rapidly demonstrate the value building these AI solutions on Azure. Specifically, you will focus on developing proof of concept applications leveraging Cognitive Services and the Azure OpenAI Services. You’ll create Generative AI-powered applications that are enhanced by the broader AI portfolio, with the goal of demonstrating the value of a business use case for your customers.

This role sits in our Global Black Belt (GBB) organization, which is a team of highly specialized & technical professionals within our Microsoft Customer & Partner Solutions organization (MCAPS) who work with customers to enable some of the most complex and innovative solutions, providing differentiated technical leadership and guidance along the way. The AI team within the GBB organization consists of Specialist and Technology experts, who focus on specific domains, industries, and workloads, such as Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Services, Application Development and Machine Learning.

This role will require travel to customer sites.

Are you interested in helping to shape the era of AI? From healthcare to manufacturing to education and constituent services, AI is transforming entire industries and fundamentally changing the way we live and work. Microsoft is helping customers embrace this opportunity and transform their businesses. Trusted by organizations around the world to run mission-critical application workloads, Azure is the place where organizations can build with AI securely, responsibly, and with confidence.

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

• Winning new AI App development engagements via solution expertise proving technical and business value via workshops (1:1, 1: many) that drive commitment for minimum viable product (MVP) for business and technical decision makers showcasing integration of AI into custom development apps and existing systems.

• Work with the solution specialist team to identify and qualify business opportunities, understand key customer technical objections, and develop the strategy to resolve technical blockers.

• Provide in-depth AI expertise to support the technical relationship with Azure customers, including product and solution briefings, creating demos, proof-of-concept work, and partner directly with product management to prioritize solutions impacting customer adoption to Azure AI Services.

• Design application architectural requirements and develop prototypes for prioritized AI use cases.

• Evaluate and select Cloud Native and Power Platform low code options for front and backend technologies.

• Define app scalability and capacity design: RPM, concurrency, performance, data security and privacy.

• Integrate Azure AI APIs and machine learning endpoints into app workflows and app + data solution architectures.

• Recommend integration strategies, enterprise architectures, platforms, and application infrastructure required to successfully implement a complete solution using best practices on Azure AI.

• Be a trusted advisor to our customers, helping them understand and incorporate AI accelerators into their overall cloud strategy by recommending migration paths, integration strategies, and application architecture that incorporate Azure AI optimized infrastructure.

• Demonstrate how Azure AI is differentiated, highlighting the power of accelerators by working with customers on POCs, demonstrating features, optimizing model performance, profiling, and benchmarking.

• Influence Azure AI strategy at the intersection of infrastructure and AI/ML by advocating for enterprise customer requirements in engineering feedback forums.

• Consultative Engagement - Engages in conversation with customers and collaborates with account and partner teams to drive and qualify new opportunities. This also includes sharing the best practices for AI App Development and producing AI App prototypes to accelerate value.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• 7+ 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 Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 4+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience

• OR equivalent experience.

• 3+ years of Full stack development selling experience in enterprise public cloud-based solutions. Technical expert on AI/Cognitive Services.

• 3+ years in customer-facing advisory or pre-sales to demonstrate ability to distill core technical concepts and connect them to business outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Solution Consulting Experience

• Experience and skills with Azure Application and AI services

• Knowledge of consuming large language model (LLM) and Foundational model APIs

• Knowledge of the App open-source ecosystem

• Certifications with Azure Application Services or equivalent industry certifications preferred.

• Knowledge of full stack application development technologies with above agerage skills in both front-end and back-end development, including web development, databases, system architecture, cloud technology, API development and integration, and software engineering.

• Familiar with DevOps and version control tools such as Git and be able to write and debug code. Additionally, a modern full stack developer should be experienced in using Microsoft Azure

• Azure AI App development experience includes integrating API-accessible Cognitive Services and Large Language Models APIs (Hugging Face, Azure OpenAI Service) into application workflows and prompt engineering development to create unique experiences.

• Knowledge of Front-end development technologies including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, React, Angular, and Vue.

• Knowledge of Back-end development technologies including Node.js, Python, and databases such as Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, MySQL and MongoDB. Additionally, a modern full stack developer should be familiar with best practices in software development, such as Agile, SOLID principles, test-driven development (TDD), and object-oriented programming (OOP).

• Addressing Industry scenarios with technology: Demonstrated effectiveness in landing technology scenarios in industry-relevant ways and credibility to lead and influence niche industry conversations.

• Understanding of Microsoft's AI technologies relative to major competitors.

• Leads conversations and sets up events within Microsoft, mentors others and develops strategies for best practice sharing, initiates conversations with prospective customers/partners at events, acts as a subject matter expert in one or more solution area(s); develops IP that is sharable internally and with customers. Collaborates with partners and internal ecosystems to analyze competitor products, solutions, and/or services and implement strategies.

Technology Specialists IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $129,200 - $248,800 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 $162,000 - $268,900 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. (https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay %20 )

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until September 25, 2024

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .