Azure Platform SME — Solutioning & Pre-Sales
Role Summary
Avanade India’s Cloud & Infrastructure practice is looking for an Azure Platform SME who can sit in front of a customer, understand their landscape, ask the right questions and shape the solution — then design and build it. This is a pre-sales-led role with real technical depth: the same person runs the discovery conversation, proposes the architecture, prepares the estimate and proposal, and stays hands-on enough to design and provision the environment.
We are looking for someone whose strength is consultative rather than order-taking. Much of the value in this role comes before any design is written — in asking the questions that surface the customer’s constraints, dependencies and real drivers, and in proposing an approach that fits their landscape rather than a standard template.
Key Responsibilities
Lead customer discovery discussions and workshops — understand the current landscape across on-premises and cloud estate, applications, infrastructure, network, identity, security, operations and existing commitments.
Ask structured, probing questions to surface business drivers, constraints, dependencies, compliance requirements, timelines and success criteria — and identify what the customer has not said as much as what they have.
Translate discovery findings into a proposed Azure solution — target architecture, options with clear trade-offs (cost, risk, effort, timeline), phasing and a recommended approach.
Present and defend the proposed solution to customer stakeholders, from technical teams through to IT and business leadership, and adapt the pitch to the audience in the room.
Prepare proposals and pre-sales collateral end to end — solution write-ups, architecture diagrams, bill of materials, assumptions, dependencies, risks, scope boundaries and SOW inputs.
Own effort and cost estimation — Azure consumption sizing and pricing, resource-level estimates, licensing considerations, and services effort estimates with clear assumptions behind the numbers.
Respond to RFPs, RFIs and customer questionnaires, working with sales, delivery and practice leadership to build a coherent and competitive response.
Design Azure platform architecture: subscription and environment strategy, landing zone, networking and connectivity, identity, security baselines, governance, monitoring, backup and DR.
Provision, configure and validate Azure resources hands-on — building POCs, pilots and initial environments to prove the solution and de-risk delivery.
Shape migration approaches for customer workloads — assessment, sizing, wave planning, migration method and cutover considerations.
Hand over cleanly to delivery teams and remain available as design authority — design reviews, escalation support and architecture governance through the engagement.
Build reusable pre-sales assets: reference architectures, solution templates, estimation models, proposal boilerplate and discovery question sets that shorten future pursuits.
Engage Microsoft and partner stakeholders on joint pursuits, funding programmes and co-sell motions where applicable.
Mentor junior architects and pre-sales consultants, and raise the quality bar on solution and proposal work across the practice.
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Required Skills & Experience
8–11 years of overall experience in cloud solution architecture, infrastructure or cloud pre-sales, with a strong recent focus on Microsoft Azure.
Solid Azure platform knowledge across the core stack: compute, storage, networking, identity, security, monitoring, backup and disaster recovery, and the platform services commonly used by enterprise workloads.
Proven customer-facing solutioning experience — running discovery discussions and workshops, understanding a customer landscape quickly, and proposing an appropriate solution rather than a generic one.
Strong questioning and listening skills, with the judgement to challenge assumptions constructively and to identify gaps, risks and dependencies early.
Hands-on experience designing and provisioning Azure resources — able to build and configure environments personally, not only produce diagrams.
Demonstrated pre-sales track record: proposals, solution write-ups, bill of materials, RFP/RFI responses and client-facing presentations.
Strong estimation capability — Azure sizing and cost estimation, effort estimation for services, and the discipline to document assumptions, exclusions and risks clearly.
Experience designing Azure landing zones and migration approaches for enterprise customers.
Azure networking depth: hub-and-spoke topologies, ExpressRoute and VPN, NSGs/UDRs, firewalling and routing, Private Link and DNS design.
Working knowledge of Azure identity and security: Entra ID and hybrid identity, RBAC, conditional access, Key Vault and Defender for Cloud.
Ability to produce clear, well-structured architecture and proposal documentation (HLD, solution overview, migration plan) at client-ready quality.
Scripting capability in PowerShell and/or CLI for provisioning, configuration and operational tasks.
Confident communication and presentation skills, with the credibility to hold a room of senior customer stakeholders.
Preferred / Good to Have
Infrastructure as Code experience — Terraform, Bicep or ARM templates — and familiarity with CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions. Good to have, not essential; willingness to build this depth is expected.
Microsoft certifications: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305), Azure Administrator (AZ-104), Azure Network Engineer (AZ-700), or security certifications such as SC-100 / SC-200.
Working knowledge of Microsoft 365, Intune/EMS and endpoint management as part of an integrated customer estate.
Experience with Microsoft partner programmes — partner capability alignment, specialization readiness, Microsoft field engagement or distributor GTM.
AWS or GCP exposure for multi-cloud positioning and comparative solutioning.
Familiarity with Azure AI and data services (Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Fabric) and how those workloads land on a governed platform.
FinOps awareness — cost optimisation, right-sizing and ongoing consumption management.
Experience in regulated or compliance-heavy environments (BFSI, healthcare, energy, public sector), including data residency requirements.
Experience in a global delivery / SI or Microsoft partner environment working with distributed teams.
Prior contribution to reusable accelerators, reference architectures or practice-building initiatives.
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