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

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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.

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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.

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Translate discovery findings into a proposed Azure solution — target architecture, options with clear trade-offs (cost, risk, effort, timeline), phasing and a recommended approach.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Respond to RFPs, RFIs and customer questionnaires, working with sales, delivery and practice leadership to build a coherent and competitive response.

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Design Azure platform architecture: subscription and environment strategy, landing zone, networking and connectivity, identity, security baselines, governance, monitoring, backup and DR.

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Provision, configure and validate Azure resources hands-on — building POCs, pilots and initial environments to prove the solution and de-risk delivery.

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Shape migration approaches for customer workloads — assessment, sizing, wave planning, migration method and cutover considerations.

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Hand over cleanly to delivery teams and remain available as design authority — design reviews, escalation support and architecture governance through the engagement.

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Build reusable pre-sales assets: reference architectures, solution templates, estimation models, proposal boilerplate and discovery question sets that shorten future pursuits.

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Engage Microsoft and partner stakeholders on joint pursuits, funding programmes and co-sell motions where applicable.

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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

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8–11 years of overall experience in cloud solution architecture, infrastructure or cloud pre-sales, with a strong recent focus on Microsoft Azure.

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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.

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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.

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Strong questioning and listening skills, with the judgement to challenge assumptions constructively and to identify gaps, risks and dependencies early.

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Hands-on experience designing and provisioning Azure resources — able to build and configure environments personally, not only produce diagrams.

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Demonstrated pre-sales track record: proposals, solution write-ups, bill of materials, RFP/RFI responses and client-facing presentations.

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Strong estimation capability — Azure sizing and cost estimation, effort estimation for services, and the discipline to document assumptions, exclusions and risks clearly.

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Experience designing Azure landing zones and migration approaches for enterprise customers.

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Azure networking depth: hub-and-spoke topologies, ExpressRoute and VPN, NSGs/UDRs, firewalling and routing, Private Link and DNS design.

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Working knowledge of Azure identity and security: Entra ID and hybrid identity, RBAC, conditional access, Key Vault and Defender for Cloud.

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Ability to produce clear, well-structured architecture and proposal documentation (HLD, solution overview, migration plan) at client-ready quality.

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Scripting capability in PowerShell and/or CLI for provisioning, configuration and operational tasks.

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Confident communication and presentation skills, with the credibility to hold a room of senior customer stakeholders.

Preferred / Good to Have

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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.

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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.

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Working knowledge of Microsoft 365, Intune/EMS and endpoint management as part of an integrated customer estate.

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Experience with Microsoft partner programmes — partner capability alignment, specialization readiness, Microsoft field engagement or distributor GTM.

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AWS or GCP exposure for multi-cloud positioning and comparative solutioning.

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Familiarity with Azure AI and data services (Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Fabric) and how those workloads land on a governed platform.

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FinOps awareness — cost optimisation, right-sizing and ongoing consumption management.

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Experience in regulated or compliance-heavy environments (BFSI, healthcare, energy, public sector), including data residency requirements.

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Experience in a global delivery / SI or Microsoft partner environment working with distributed teams.

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Prior contribution to reusable accelerators, reference architectures or practice-building initiatives.

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