Director, AI Business Solutions Specialist Manager

Microsoft
Microsoft

Software Engineering, Data Science, Customer Service

United States

USD 133k-222,700 / year

Posted on Aug 13, 2026
Overview

Leads and develops a high-performing team of AI Business Solutions Specialists responsible for helping customers transform how people work, how business processes operate, and how organizations create value through Microsoft AI, Copilot, agents, automation, business applications, low-code platforms, and cloud technologies. Builds a culture of accountability, customer obsession, innovation, continuous learning, and execution excellence while driving business growth across both productivity-led and business-process-led transformation opportunities. Champions a consultative, outcome-focused sales culture that moves customer conversations beyond technology adoption to organizational transformation and measurable business impact. Serves as a senior business leader who shapes go-to-market strategy, influences organizational priorities, and drives execution across Microsoft sales, customer success, partner, engineering, and delivery organizations. Partners with senior leaders to identify growth opportunities, remove barriers, accelerate customer outcomes, and strengthen Microsoft’s leadership in AI-powered business transformation. Leads teams in helping customers reimagine employee productivity, decision-making, customer engagement, business operations, and end-to-end business processes through Copilot, agents, AI-powered applications, automation, analytics, and emerging AI technologies. Coaches specialists to lead executive conversations focused on business outcomes, transformation roadmaps, change management, value realization, and long-term strategic impact. Champions operational excellence through disciplined business management, forecasting, pipeline rigor, consumption growth, and data-driven decision making. Uses market intelligence, customer insights, competitive signals, and AI-powered analytics to guide investments, identify emerging opportunities, and improve business performance across the territory. Acts as a leader beyond the immediate team by driving organizational change, scaling best practices, influencing strategic initiatives, and building future leadership capabilities. Serves as an executive sponsor for priority customers and strategic opportunities while helping shape Microsoft’s broader AI business transformation strategy. In addition, this role is responsible for attracting, developing, and retaining exceptional talent; building future leaders; fostering an inclusive, high-performing culture; managing employee performance; and ensuring the organization is positioned to achieve both near-term business objectives and long-term growth.



Responsibilities

Customer Engagement

  • Lead and mentor a team of specialists in developing trusted advisor relationships with senior business and technology decision makers across strategic customers.
  • Coach specialists to lead discovery-first engagements that uncover business priorities, quantify desired outcomes, align stakeholders, and create urgency for change.
  • Help customers develop enterprise AI strategies that connect employee productivity, business process transformation, data, security, and organizational change into a unified business vision.
  • Ensure teams translate customer priorities into differentiated transformation strategies, compelling business cases, working prototypes, measurable value realization plans, and scalable adoption programs.
  • Coach specialists to engage C-suite executives, business decision makers, line-of-business leaders, operations leaders, HR, finance, sales, customer service, and IT stakeholders.
  • Serve as an executive sponsor for priority customers and strategic opportunities, helping remove barriers, align stakeholders, and accelerate business decisions.
  • Drive conversations focused on workforce transformation, business process modernization, AI adoption, change management, customer outcomes, and long-term business value.
  • Ensure customer engagements demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to security, compliance, privacy, and responsible AI throughout the customer journey.
  • Position services, support, adoption, and change management as critical components of customer success and value realization.

People Leadership & Culture

  • Build and sustain a high-performance sales culture grounded in accountability, customer obsession, collaboration, innovation, inclusion, and continuous growth.
  • Model Microsoft’s culture, values, and leadership principles through everyday leadership, customer engagement, coaching, and decision making.
  • Establish clear team objectives, performance expectations, and measurable outcomes aligned to business priorities.
  • Coach specialists to become strategic, consultative sellers capable of leading executive conversations, navigating complex stakeholder environments, and driving transformational outcomes.
  • Build a culture where specialists understand and articulate Microsoft’s end-to-end AI transformation story rather than individual products or solution categories.
  • Develop talent through coaching, mentorship, succession planning, and individualized growth plans to create future leaders.
  • Invest in business, industry, technical, AI, and competitive fluency across the team to strengthen customer credibility and consultative selling capabilities.
  • Create an inclusive environment where employees receive direct feedback, understand expectations, and are empowered to achieve their potential.
  • Lead the team through market, technology, organizational, and customer-driven change with clarity and confidence.
  • Recognize and scale behaviors that contribute to sustainable customer success and business performance.
  • Manage performance with fairness, urgency, accountability, and a commitment to employee development.

Sales & Pipeline Management

  • Own the team’s business performance and establish an operating rhythm that connects strategy, execution, pipeline health, forecast accuracy, consumption growth, and customer outcomes.
  • Lead rigorous pipeline and business reviews with specialists and senior stakeholders to improve opportunity quality, sales execution, forecasting, and accountability.
  • Establish clear standards for opportunity qualification, progression, close planning, consumption milestones, and customer success handoffs.
  • Use AI-powered analytics, usage data, propensity insights, renewal signals, and customer health indicators to prioritize investments and guide execution.
  • Ensure sales and consumption pipeline data is accurate, complete, and aligned with customer commitments and business outcomes.
  • Drive early orchestration with Account Teams, Solution Engineering, Customer Success, Services, Global Partner Solutions, and partners to reduce execution risk and accelerate outcomes.
  • Lead teams in identifying and addressing deal risk, adoption challenges, consumption gaps, and competitive threats.
  • Develop scalable operating practices and interventions that improve sales performance across the broader organization.
  • Balance near-term revenue and consumption goals with long-term pipeline health and customer value realization.

Sales Strategy & Business Growth

  • Lead comprehensive territory planning and business analysis to identify whitespace, market shifts, competitive threats, emerging customer priorities, and new growth opportunities.
  • Develop and execute strategies that protect and expand existing business, accelerate customer transformation, and create new opportunities for long-term growth.
  • Guide teams in positioning Microsoft as the strategic AI platform connecting employee experiences, business applications, business processes, enterprise data, and security.
  • Lead teams in identifying opportunities that span Microsoft 365 Copilot, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Copilot Studio, Agents, Work IQ, and future AI-driven solutions.
  • Coach specialists to lead value-based customer conversations that focus on business outcomes, productivity gains, operational efficiency, customer experience, and growth.
  • Develop strategies that expand AI adoption from individual productivity improvements to organization-wide transformation initiatives.
  • Drive customer conversations around agentic workflows, AI-enabled operating models, business process modernization, and next-generation business applications.
  • Shape and sponsor new sales motions, customer engagement models, and solution strategies that respond to evolving customer and market demands.
  • Influence senior stakeholders on resource allocation, investment priorities, strategic initiatives, and go-to-market execution.
  • Continuously evaluate performance, customer feedback, and market intelligence to refine sales strategies and improve business results.

Partner & Cross-Organizational Leadership

  • Build strong relationships across Account Teams, Customer Success, Solution Engineering, Industry Solutions Delivery, Global Partner Solutions, Services, Marketing, and Product organizations.
  • Create strong collaboration across AI Workforce, AI Business Process, Data & AI, Security, Infrastructure, and Customer Success teams to deliver integrated customer outcomes.
  • Align stakeholders around shared customer goals, execution plans, ownership models, and success metrics.
  • Lead orchestration of complex customer pursuits across multiple organizations and solution areas.
  • Establish effective handoffs that preserve business context, customer outcomes, success criteria, and accountability throughout the customer lifecycle.
  • Develop strategic partner relationships that increase solution capacity, improve time-to-value, and strengthen Microsoft’s market position.
  • Drive partner attachment and co-sell strategies that accelerate adoption, deployment, value realization, and customer success.
  • Resolve organizational barriers and competing priorities through influence, credibility, and strong leadership.
  • Create feedback loops between the field and engineering, product, marketing, and enablement teams to improve field readiness and customer impact.

Innovation & Organizational Impact

  • Act as a leader beyond the immediate team by shaping broader business priorities, sharing strategic insights, and contributing to cross-organizational initiatives.
  • Scale successful transformation patterns, customer success stories, best practices, and sales motions across the broader organization.
  • Encourage thoughtful experimentation with AI, agents, automation, copilots, and emerging technologies to improve seller effectiveness and customer outcomes.
  • Establish measurable success criteria for new motions and use data-driven insights to determine when to scale or adjust approaches.
  • Anticipate changes in customer demand, competitive dynamics, technology trends, and AI adoption patterns, translating those changes into action plans for the team.
  • Represent customer and field perspectives in leadership discussions that influence product strategy, investments, programs, and go-to-market priorities.
  • Maintain disciplined execution of the current business while building the capabilities, skills, partnerships, and opportunities required for future growth.
  • Create durable organizational impact through talent development, strategic influence, operational excellence, and measurable customer outcomes.

Role Success Profile

The successful leader in this role is equally comfortable discussing employee productivity transformation, AI-powered business processes, Copilot adoption, agentic automation, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, organizational change, and business strategy. They build exceptional teams, drive operational rigor, influence beyond organizational boundaries, and help customers transform how work gets done through AI.

They do not simply lead a sales team. They build a business, develop talent, shape strategy, and help customers become AI-powered organizations.



Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Information Security, or related field AND 6+ years experience in technology-related sales or account management 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 the future require employer sponsorship.
Additional or preferred qualifications
Master's Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, Information Security, or related field AND 8+ years experience in technology-related sales or account management OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Information Security, or related field AND 12+ years experience in technology-related sales or account management OR equivalent experience.
6+ years solution or services sales experience.
3+ years people management experience.


Solution Area Specialists M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $133,000 - $222,700 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 $170,300 - $239,800 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.