Cloud Solution Architect - AI Biz Solutions

Delivers solutions in line with company methodologies, ensuring proven practices and patterns are followed. Operates according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record. Business Impact Operates according to required operational excellence and proven practice standards throughout all sales stages/activities/tools of record (e.g., pipeline updates, time tracking). Proactively manages business and technical risks, adapts methodology and applies governance principles to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks. Continuously prioritizes among competing demands in their work and identifies where impact occurs with customers, ensuring alignment with business priorities and goals. Delivers solutions in line with company methodologies (e.g., product offerings such as value-based deliverables [VBDs], advice, training, technical validation), ensuring proven practices and patterns are followed to prepare customers for operational readiness and achievement of their business goals and targets. Leveraging knowledge of change management proven practices and/or involving the change management team, proactively helps the customer deploy for long-term organizational adoption to increase customer satisfaction and drive consumption/usage. Guides customers/partners towards a well-architected (e.g., secure, resilient, artificial intelligence [AI]-enabled), and cost- and performance-optimized solution to increase retention and expansion opportunities. Provides feedback to Unified Delivery Team on VBDs to refine and further develop content. Actively listens to and respectfully challenges customers/partners, building trust to then advocate for alternative architectures/solutions/approaches that shape and/or enhance customer requirements. Identifies, and evaluates industry trends (e.g., customer industry verticals, information technology [IT] industry), gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps existing architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes. Proactively identifies, escalates, and mitigates blockers using appropriate tools and processes to accelerate solution deployment, value realization and usage/consumption. Applies business, technical, industry, and/or enterprise knowledge to architecture or support projects to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified constraints. Customer Centricity Proactively acts as the voice of the customer/partner, sharing ideas, feedback, insights, success stories and strategic/technical input with Engineering teams, Product Offerings teams and internal communities leveraging relevant insights from feedback tools and systems. Identifies patterns of feedback across customers/partners/territories/industries and leverages them to develop strategic and actionable insights. Presents business cases to program managers to influence product roadmaps, decision making, bug fix prioritization, and own and drive initiatives as appropriate. Builds relationships with technical decision makers (TDMs), and helps build the bridge between TDMs and business decision makers (BDMs). Independently interacts as needed with customers/partners' Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and other C-level (CXO) roles to bridge understanding of security, compliance, operational and risk requirements across BDMs, TDMs, CIO and CISO teams, appropriately engaging additional subject matter experts when deeper expertise is required. Drives self and guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Defines customer/partner conditions of success by leveraging an understanding of customer goals. Anticipates and addresses customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs, and executes strategies to improve customer experience, value realization, and acceleration of transformation. Partner Specialization Identifies and prioritizes several opportunities that align with revenue goals, and orchestrates growth of solution utilization pipeline with partners. Provides assistance with partner and sales teams to bring clarity to specific opportunities through proof of concept and technical pre-sales support. Understands solution area-specific market opportunities (e.g., competitor insights) and collaborates with Global Partner Solutions (GPS) business stakeholders to lead and execute initiatives to translate opportunities into actions. Proactively guides and supports partners in developing repeatable offerings, practices, products, and solutions. Advises the partner throughout initial strategic customer implementations. Architecture Design - The ability to apply reference architecture and patterns for a variety of solutions (e.g., advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, big data, Internet of Things, modern business intelligence and analytics, modern applications, data platform modernization, data warehousing, business intelligence and analytics, etc.). Leverages market insights and demand signals to assist leadership in identifying relevant areas in which to drive up-skilling and/or accreditations based on demand. Role models technical readiness, both depth-aligned to solution area priorities and breadth-aligned to Customer Success Unit (CSU)/corporate initiatives (e.g., security, resilience, AI), and influences team to drive their own technical readiness. Acts as a mentor, leading readiness and upskilling activities in the team/organization by educating colleagues on technical and non-technical concepts and sharing proven practices. Proactively identifies gaps through delivery, communicates those gaps to relevant team members and internal/external stakeholders, and connects gaps and patterns across business and technology areas that drive changes and improvements to products, intellectual property (IP) (both existing and new), technologies, and/or processes/practices that enable solutions to scale across customers. Provides thought leadership and innovation to customers/partners and internal communities at the local level. Driving Customer Outcomes - Understanding and mapping customer requirements to the company's offerings effectively. Identifying opportunities, translating customer needs into tailored solutions, ensuring that products or services precisely meet customer expectations, resulting in high levels of satisfaction and success. Business Relationship Management - The ability to develop and maintain positive working relationships with supervisors, staff, managers, customers, and vendors. This includes expressing empathy and compassion when dealing with the needs and problems of others, being approachable, taking time to address the concerns of coworkers, and treating others with respect and dignity. Change Management - The ability to define and implement procedures and/or technologies to deal with changes in the environment. This may include adapting to change, controlling change, and/or affecting change. Customer Advocacy - Knowledge of Customer Advocacy, a continuing focus on the requirements of the company's customers, anticipating their needs, remaining sensitive to customers while performing services for them, being responsive to customer requests, generally working on their behalf. Trusted Advisor - The ability to build trusted advisor status and deep relationships across stakeholders (e.g., technical decision makers, business decision makers) through an understanding of customer needs and technologies.