AI Sales Director - UK

The AI Sales Director is a senior leader within our worldwide AI commercial solution area organization. The role leads, develops and manages a team of high performing Solution & Technology Specialists in the Global Black Belt team. These technical sellers are assigned AI (Artificial Intelligence) workloads working with Microsoft's customers and partners to enable and accelerate their AI strategy to the cloud. You will lead teams within your AI Pod as a manager/lead to help customers derive value through their AI projects.
This role sits in our GBB organization, which is a team of highly specialized and technical professionals within our Microsoft Customer & Partner Solutions organization (MCAPS) who work with customers to enable some of the most complex and innovative solutions, providing differentiated technical leadership and guidance along the way. The AI team within the GBB organization consists of Specialist and Technology experts, who focus on specific domains, industries, and workloads, such as Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Services, Application Development and Machine Learning. This role will require travel to customer sites.
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.
Please note that we can only consider candidates that currently live in the United Kingdom.,

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  40% - Develops and coaches high-performing team by hiring diverse talent, prioritizing development, preparing people for more senior positions in other parts of the organization and delivers success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching and caring.
  
• 30% - Builds and transforms new markets and identify and capitalize and lead transformational shifts in our customers by maintaining a customer and partner network and build credibility as a domain 'thought-leader' representing Microsoft in events.


• 30% - Disciplined in business management; adaptable to a culture of accountability; build a strong and active business network; Drives increased customer value by coaching sellers through the process of identifying and qualifying Azure AI/ML/Cognitive services, and advanced workload opportunities. Drive adoption of AI strategies, resources, and best practices to develop and drive these engagements leading to customer value. Effectively drive customer readiness and planning for the cloud journey


Sales Execution

• Brings impactful market insights into customer engagements and helps close deals with customers and coaches and influences direct reports and others internally on how to do this.


• Coaches their team to collaborate with partners and other internal teams (e.g., Solution Specialists, cloud solution architects etc.).


• Provides direction/guidance on the development of solutions across regions. Helps the team create vision for the customers and develop plans to drive value for customers by leveraging Azure AI services.


Technical Expertise

• Promote best practice sharing across geographies and functions for Azure and Azure AI.


• Acts as the spokesman for Microsoft at external events.

Develops strategies to position Microsoft products, solutions, and/or services against competitors.

Sales Excellence

• Builds and transforms new markets by leveraging technical and industry expertise, partners, and resources. Leads a team to explore business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and facilitate customer innovation.


• Participates in regular strategic planning for their assigned geography. Review plans via Rhythm of Business (ROB) meetings and align the plans of their team across departments.


• Guides their team in whitespace analysis and supports the team to identify potential business in the assigned geography.
  
  Strong and proven of technology-related sales or account management experience

+ OR bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, Analytics, Data Science or related field AND 6+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience.

• At least strong people management experience building high performing teams


Additional or Preferred Qualifications:

• Proven technology-related sales or account management experience

+ OR bachelor's degree in information technology, or related field AND technology-related sales or account management experience
+ OR master's degree in business administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND proven technology-related sales or account management experience.

• Solution or services sales experience.


• Certification in sales, sales management, complex sales training, sales methodologies, broad evangelism through events (presentation skills), and consultative selling.


• Knowledge of Azure AI services portfolio or equivalent, and additional open-source technology (eg. PyTorch, MLFlow etc.).


• Certifications: Azure Data Engineer, or Azure Data Scientist, or Azure AI Engineer or equivalent industry certifications.


Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.