Senior Solution Manager

Job Category: Technical Service and IT
Location: Redmond, WA, US
Job ID: 841335-117359
Division: Operating Systems Engineering

Wanted:
Talented IT/Business professional who loves complex and high stakes challenges.
A Program Manager/Solution Manager who is at home cross collaborating with multiple stakeholders to define the current and future state business processes, identifying issues and risks, suggesting mitigation strategies and driving towards technology solutions.
A Program Manager/Solution Manager who is determined to succeed by driving timely delivery of end-to-end software solutions that will enable and enhance launch and Release processes for Microsoft products across the globe.
An IT professional experienced with both business strategy development and knowledge of security systems and certification management.

If this is you, read on:

The Release & Provisioning Team is responsible for driving thought leadership and execution excellence of one of the most impactful IT spaces across all of Microsoft. The group is at the center of the essence of what Microsoft does - globally launch and release programs and products to billions of customers and channel partners. This group owns and drives end to end solutions to support Microsoft's critical release processes and increase the security, consistency, and flexibility of the full range of Product Release Services. They do this through working with key business clients and engineering groups to engineer end to end process and IT solutions. The group works closely with business owners to gather customer requirements, translate them into clear compelling business cases and requirements documents, and then implement them to deliver solutions. Successful group members have a detail orientation and are still able to see the big picture and work with the business to drive a strategy which optimizes the IT investment.

The Solution Manager will act as an interface and solution owner working to define the strategy and tactics for an enterprise platform. An enterprise platform is a set of programs or a platform spanning across Microsoft. This role includes facilitation of the IT planning and estimating as well as managing the business requirements and ensuring the IT team delivers on the agreed requirements.

The Solution Manager will also work closely with program management with regards to the development, test, and release/support teams throughout the SDLC process. In addition, the solution owner will work with program management to help define operational processes, drive the launch, adoption, and training, support program development and execution, track customer feedback and keep current on Microsoft technologies in order to build improvements into future solution requirements.

As a Principal Solution Manager this person will be responsible for:
Collaborating with business partners to find alternatives and solutions to business challenges. Seek out systems solutions (either internal to MS or external 3rd party solutions) that can be leveraged to meet business requirements. Engage the business client early and effectively building solid relationships and pushing IT value upstream as key business direction is being set
Identifying, understanding, negotiating and documenting business requirements with various groups within Microsoft
Facilitation of the IT planning and estimating phase
Manage the delivery of business cases, scope and requirements documents, use-case documentation, test plans, and rollout communications
Act as primary liaison with program and Solution Management during the development lifecycle from needs analysis and bug tracking to UAT and rollout
Developing and managing direct relationships with key stakeholders and subject matter experts to ensure the business solutions are aligned with their goals and priorities, and how process automation through IT solutions will help them reach their goals.
Balance the customer's requirements with technical constraints (eg, application size, network bandwidth, hardware/software/equipment selections) to ensure that the value of the project is realized. Clearly understand, articulate and document existing "as-is" systems & business architecture and define strategy for "to-be" architecture.
Recommend systems and business best practices across Ops and drive adoption to ensure consistency of systems solutions.
Exercise independent judgment in developing methods, techniques, architectures and standards for obtaining solutions. Ensures scalability and international capabilities of technology.
Create and maintain a cohesive, coordinated plan to deliver solutions that meet the stakeholders priorities within budgetary and product requirements.
Budget management - Define and gain agreement on a project budget - ensures project tracks to the budget.
Provide in-depth business & technical strategy for systems solutions, identify business gaps and correlate to potential solutions.
Drive the prioritization process by which decisions are made around the final project scope
Execute on project plans and assist others in executing on project plans across the various groups
Makes scope/schedule/resources (including budget) trade-off decisions with little or no guidance.
Ensure line of business priorities and IT capabilities (technology and resources) are aligned.
Analyze and document requirements and use appropriate techniques to refine, decompose, review and validate requirements. Ensure requirements are traceable, well communicated and aligned to the overall business or solution vision.
Demonstrate a sound understanding of how the overall business solution is positioned, deployed and supported globally. Evangelizing business benefits to IT and influence project team priorities as well as to resolve user issues.

Requirements/Qualifications and Previous Work and Related Experience (including educational requirements):
Strong negotiation and consensus building skills when dealing with internal customers, stakeholders and team members.
Ability to understand current/changing business processes, participation in defining application and platform functionality.
Has built credible customer relationships both in immediate team and across multiple customer groups.
Can identify business issues and develop risk mitigation strategies.
Sound understanding of IT technology concepts. Must have a basic understanding of software architectures, MS products, development tools, etc. This person does not need to have deep technical knowledge.
This individual also needs to be a strong leader who can focus on the vision and strategies of the group while managing the tactical components of running the daily business. Balance daily support needs with long-term strategy and successfully combine vision and reality into effective plans.
Ability to deal with the ambiguity associated with working in a fast paced and changing environment.
Exceptional communication, problem solving and cross-group collaboration skills.
Demonstrated expertise using written & verbal communication skills to distill technology projects into understandable and compelling executive level presentations.
Ability to recognize and resolve conflict.
Excellent analysis and critical thinking skills.
Solid project/program management skills deploying large-scale cross enterprise IT systems implementations within the SDLC in a fast based unstructured environment because of the end to end nature of the Solution Management responsibilities.
Extensive product and program management experience with techniques such as use case analysis, data/process flow diagramming, JAA/JAD, process mapping and requirements documentation is highly desirable.
Experience in Continuous Improvement methodologies (eg Six Sigma, Lean) preferred.
Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field of study for software development and project/program management preferred.
Masters degree preferred.
Minimum of ten years software development related experience.