The Senior Data & Analytics Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) is a customer‑facing technical leadership role responsible for shaping, landing, and accelerating modern data platform and analytics solutions on Microsoft Azure. Operating as a trusted advisor to enterprise customers, you help them envision and implement data‑driven transformations that improve business performance, unlock AI innovation, and enable secure, scalable cloud adoption in alignment with Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework and Azure Well‑Architected pillars.

You will bring deep expertise across data architecture, data engineering, modern analytics, and AI‑ready platforms. You work closely with Customer Success Account Managers (CSAMs), Technical Specialists, Engineering, and Partner teams to remove technical blockers, drive consumption, and ensure customers realise measurable value from their Azure investments.

You will guide customers through the full solution lifecycle—from strategic design sessions and architecture reviews to hands‑on implementation guidance, governance, optimisation, and production readiness. You will lead conversations on topics such as data lakehouse design, real‑time analytics, data governance (including Purview), AI/ML operationalisation, migration of legacy data estates, and secure, cost‑efficient architectures for enterprise data workloads.

The role requires strong executive presence, the ability to simplify complex technical concepts, and a passion for enabling customers to maximise the impact of analytics and AI. You will contribute to reusable patterns, best practices, and internal community knowledge sharing to elevate the data & AI capability across the organisation. Your influence spans strategic customers, industry verticals, and Microsoft’s internal product feedback loops.

Customer Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Lead end‑to‑end architecture design for modern data platforms using services such as Fabric, Data Factory, Databricks, Event Hubs, Stream Analytics, Cosmos DB, and Azure SQL.
• Guide customers through data estate modernisation, cloud migration strategies, and platform optimisation aligned to Well‑Architected principles.
• Drive adoption of governance, security, and compliance capabilities including Microsoft Purview, RBAC, Private Link, network isolation, and data lifecycle management.

Consumption & Delivery Acceleration

• Remove technical blockers through hands‑on guidance, design validation, performance tuning, and architectural remediation.
• Translate business requirements into actionable technical roadmaps that accelerate workload deployment and Azure consumption.
• Lead architecture design sessions (ADS), cloud architecture reviews (CAR), and production readiness processes.

Analytics & AI Enablement

• Shape customer strategies for advanced analytics, real‑time processing, and machine learning operationalisation.
• Partner with Data Science, App Innovation, and AI specialists to land end‑to‑end solutions enabling data‑driven applications and generative AI scenarios.
• Promote best practices for Fabric adoption, semantic models, data governance, and analytics self‑service.

Cross‑Functional Collaboration & Influence

• Serve as the technical backbone for CSAMs and account teams during key moments of truth.
• Partner with product engineering to provide customer insights, influence roadmap priorities, and escalate complex platform issues.
• Contribute to internal communities, reusable IP, workshops, and field enablement to scale knowledge across the Data & AI architecture discipline.

Operational Excellence

• Maintain high standards in documentation, architecture artefacts, security compliance, and customer success methodologies.
• Use telemetry insights and cost optimisation principles to ensure stable, efficient, and sustainable customer architectures.

Required Qualifications

• Deep technical expertise in modern data architecture, cloud‑based data engineering, and analytics workloads.
• Proven experience designing and implementing solutions using Azure Data Lake Storage, Databricks/Spark, Fabric, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, or equivalent cloud services.
• Strong understanding of data governance, metadata management, lineage, data quality, and security best practices.
• Experience guiding enterprise customers through cloud migrations or data platform transformations.
• Ability to engage with senior technical and business leaders, translating complex concepts into actionable plans.
• Hands‑on proficiency with languages and tools such as SQL, Python, Spark, data modelling, and ETL/ELT patterns.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AI/ML platforms (Azure ML, MLflow, Fabric Data Science, or similar) and operationalisation patterns.
• Knowledge of real‑time event processing, streaming architecture, and IoT data patterns.
• Certifications such as Azure Data Engineer Associate, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, or DP‑500/DP‑600.
• Familiarity with DevOps, CI/CD for data pipelines, Infrastructure‑as‑Code (Bicep/Terraform), and Git‑based workflows.
• Strong collaboration skills across engineering, sales, partners, and multi‑disciplinary customer teams.
• Demonstrated contributions to technical communities, reusable assets, or field enablement initiatives.