Director, Azure Local Customer and Partner Acceleration

Join the Microsoft Azure Edge team and help businesses around the world transform with Azure Local and Microsoft Sovereign Private Cloud. This position will lead our customer acceleration team for Azure Local and is accountable for building and managing a high impact team that drives customer pursuits, accelerates customer enablement, and scales the Azure Local ecosystem across strategic industries and partners.

This role sits at the intersection of customers, partners, engineering, and field teams, ensuring Azure Local delivers measurable customer outcomes while informing product and ecosystem strategy through real world deployments. The role combines deep customer and industry engagement with people leadership, cross functional influence, and strategic execution.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

• Build, coach, and lead a team of Customer Engagement Program Managers and Engineers focused on Azure Local customer success, adoption, and growth.
• Drive employee growth and development through coaching, feedback, and career planning.
• Execute team projects, set clear priorities, and manage performance in alignment with Microsoft leadership principles.
• Foster a culture of customer obsession, accountability, inclusion, and continuous learning.

Customer Pursuit & Strategy Leadership

•  Lead high impact Azure Local customer pursuits from early egagement through production deployment.
• Oversee customer strategy, potential solution evolutions, and the impact of Azure Local and broader Microsoft products across customer environments.
• Influence customer business strategy and/or Microsoft strategy to remove blockers and accelerate outcomes.

Customer Enablement & Conditions of Success

• Ensure customers are successfully enabled on Azure Local through structured onboarding, architecture guidance, and operational readiness.
• Establish and operationalize best practice methods for qualifying when customers have met defined conditions of success.
• Drive repeatable engagement models that accelerate time to value and reduce deployment friction.
• Capture customer insights and translate them into actionable feedback for product and engineering teams.

Industry & Domain Expertise

• Act as an industry and solution expert across Azure Local and adjacent Microsoft platforms.
• Help cross functional teams resolve customer requests or issues across focused product areas by aligning on strategy and recommended approaches.
• Provide clarity on customer scenarios, tradeoffs, and best practices to guide internal and external decision making.

Ecosystem & Partner Scaling

• Collaborate with ISVs, OEMs, SIs, and internal Microsoft teams to scale the Azure Local ecosystem.
• Identify gaps in tooling, documentation, partner readiness, and solution patterns; drive cross org solutions.
• Support go to market motions that expand Azure Local adoption in regulated, sovereign, and edge focused environments.

Cross Functional & Executive Leadership

• Champion cross functional collaboration with engineering and sales leadership to establish a cohesive stance and best practices during customer interactions.
• Accelerate deal closing and technology adoption through aligned messaging, execution, and escalation management.
• Serve as a connective tissue between customers, Azure Edge engineering, and the broader Azure organization.
• Influence roadmap priorities by representing customer and partner needs with clarity, data, and strategic context. 

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Math, Business, or related field AND 8+ years experience in engineering, product/technical program management, data analysis, or product development OR equivalent experience.

• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science,