Technical Specialist

Overview
The main goal of a Microsoft Technology Specialist (TS) is to win the technical decision of customers to purchase and use our technology. The TS is expected to be able to both own and win customers' technical decisions, as well as find new opportunities through their contacts and engagements for sales specialists to pursue. As a TS, you work within a virtual team of technical, partner and consulting resources to help educate your customers at a technical level, demonstrate, and prove our solutions, and win the technical decision, allowing the team to achieve/exceed quarterly sales targets in your accounts. Being part of this team will allow you to maintain and develop your deep technical expertise across Microsoft and non-Microsoft cloud-based technologies.
We are seeking a Technical Specialist to join our team.
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.

**Qualifications**:
Required/Minimum 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.
Additional or Preferred Qualifications
8+ years technical pre-sales, technical consulting, or technology delivery, or related experience
OR equivalent experience.
6+ years experience with cloud and hybrid, or on premises infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, industry standards, and/or technology management.
**Azure Certifications**: Azure Data Engineer Associate (DP 203) or Enterprise Data Analyst Associate (DP 600) or Azure Cosmos DB Developer Specialty (DP 420).
**Competitive Landscape**: Knowledge of Database platforms such as AWS, GCP, Mongo DB, and Oracle.
**Partners**: Experience leveraging partner solutions to solve customer needs and scale opportunities.
**Proof of Concepts**: Experience creating Database Proof of Concepts (PoC)/Pilots for customers that lead to production deployments.
**Deep domain knowledge in Databases**: Understands Microsoft Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Oracle, MySQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, IBM Db2, Snowflake, Cassandra DB, Maria DB, etc.
Cross organizational and functional collaboration skills to drive the optimal solution for the customer needs
Technology Specialists IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across Canada is CAD $121,800 - CAD $219,100 per year.
**Find additional pay information here**: Canada pay information | Microsoft Careers.

**Responsibilities**:
Own technical discussions with customers leveraging processes and tools, demos, and programs using consultative sales methodology and technical expertise to influence the customer vision; establish rules of engagement (e.g., role boundaries, handoff strategies) for extended teams.
**Build technical strategy**: map the agreed customer vision into a strategy, resolve concerns, preventing, and removing technical blockers, and validating a business case for investment and translated technology complexity into business impact. Work with the customer, account team, and partners to orchestrate a roadmap for implementation guiding the customer to choose the best Microsoft platform and win the AI Design, inclusive of Microsoft AI, Application services, and Databases.
Design the solution using your technical knowledge, architectural approach, consultancy skills and our methodology to win a customer's technical decision and meet the customer's needs; drive POCs/Pilots to create momentum for MVPs, infusing key AI technologies where appropriate and being technically proficient to do POC with hands-on-skills.
Facilitate cross collaboration across AI, and Apps Innovation team to drive AI Design Wins and support the customer AI transformation inclusive of AI Applications and data foundation. Support the creation of new pipeline in collaboration with the Specialist and account team by identify new opportunities within customer engagement and hand off to the Solution Specialist for pursuit.
Maintain and grow expertise in Database scenarios including Cosmos DB, SQL DB, and PostgreSQL as well as relevant AI technologies while keeping up to date with market trends and competitive insights; collaborate and share with the Data & AI technical community.
Be the Trusted advisor and use proactive effort to find and understand customers' pain points and work with partners to design and offer solutions (with business case) to technical leaders by being an Azure platform evange