Principal Consultant A2 - Infra

Overview

Microsoft Industry Solution - Global Center Innovation and Delivery Center (GCID) delivers end-to-end solutions by enabling accelerated adoption and productive use of Microsoft technologies. An organization of well over 1000+ exceptional people, GCID presents a great opportunity for highly skilled services professionals to make a foray into consulting, solution development and delivery roles.

The Principal Consultant is a senior leader responsible for the successful technical execution and delivery of complex client projects across diverse domains. This role acts as a strategic anchor between clients, architects, delivery managers, project managers, and delivery teams. In the AI-first GCID org, Principal Consultants are expected to embed AI-native thinking into delivery models, ensuring solutions are intelligent, scalable, and aligned with business outcomes. The ideal candidate is passionate about technology, demonstrates breadth of expertise, and advocates for solutions that deliver true client value. As a full Stack Infrastructure Consultant, design, build, and optimize end-to-end cloud and on-premises infrastructure solutions, ensuring secure, scalable, and high performing environments across the entire technology stack.

Responsibilities

AI-First Delivery Leadership

• Embed AI-first principles into delivery workflows, leveraging automation and intelligent orchestration where applicable.
• Lead end-to-end delivery of complex projects, ensuring solutions are scalable, robust, and aligned with client business outcomes.
• Drive engineering excellence through reusable components, accelerators, and scalable architecture.
• Oversee technical execution across multiple projects, ensuring adherence to best practices, quality standards, and compliance requirements.
• Collaborate with clients and internal stakeholders to define strategies, delivery plans, milestones, and risk mitigation approaches.
• Act as a technical point of contact for clients, translating business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Ensure delivery models are optimized for modern, AI-native execution, including integration of automation and intelligent processes.
• Ability to step into at risk projects, quickly assess issues, and establish a credible path to recovery or exit.   
  
  

Engineering Excellence

• Champion high-quality engineering practices across all delivery engagements.
• Ensure adherence to coding standards, architectural integrity, and performance benchmarks.
• Ability to step into at‑risk projects, quickly assess issues, and establish a credible path to recovery or exit.
• Promote secure coding, test-driven development, and observability as default practices.
• Encourage continuous learning and technical certifications to maintain cutting-edge expertise.
• Drive adoption of modern delivery methodologies (Agile, DevOps, CI/CD) to ensure robust and scalable solutions.
• Foster a culture of technical rigor, innovation, and accountability within the team.
  
  

Innovation & Thought Leadership

• Monitor and evaluate emerging technologies to inform strategic direction.
• Lead innovation in delivery models, reusable assets, and accelerators to enhance efficiency and impact.
• Champion modern thinking and best practices across teams and engagements to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
  
  

Client Engagement & Solutioning

• Use design thinking to shape user centric solutions, aligning business goals, architecture decisions, and delivery execution. 
• Engage with clients to understand business needs and provide expert guidance throughout the project lifecycle.
• Support pre-sales and solutioning efforts with estimations, proof-of-concepts, and technical proposals.
• Build and maintain strong client relationships, ensuring high levels of satisfaction and value delivery.
  
  

Team Management & Mentorship

• Lead and mentor cross-functional teams, fostering a culture of learning, collaboration, and technical excellence.
• Conduct reviews, provide feedback, and support professional development of team members.
  
  

Quality & Compliance

• Ensure secure, compliant, and reliable solution delivery through secure coding, testdriven development, observability, design reviews, and quality gates across all engagements. 
  
  

Strategic Partnering

• Serve as a strategic partner for internal and external stakeholders on key initiatives.
• Provide strategic guidance and execution oversight to ensure alignment with organizational goals.
  
  

Qualifications

Required Qualifications (RQs) 

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years leadership experience in relevant area of business. Higher Education Preferred 
• OR master’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years’ experience in technology solutions, practice development, architecture, consulting, and/or Cloud Infrastructure domain 
• Highly proficient & solid Customer facing Project experience involving solution design, project envisioning, planning, development, and deployment of complex solutions with minimum of 10 plus years.  
• Must have a proven record of delivering technical solutions. 
• 2+ years managing multiple projects or portfolios 
• 1+ year(s) experience leading blended, multidisciplinary teams 
  
  

 

Preferred Qualifications (PQs)  

• Overall minimum 20+ Year of industry experience 
• Technical or Professional Certification in Cloud Infrastructure domain Open to travel domestically and internationally and work with different cultures and customers 
• Technical certifications based on domain/service line (e.g., Azure, Security, Dynamics). 
• Delivery Management certification (e.g., Scrum, Agile). 
  
  

Areas of Expertise   

AI First Infrastructure Skills

Proficiency in Python for automation, AI integration, and scripting across infra workflows

Experience with Azure AI Services (AI Foundry, AI Agent services, Azure AI Search, Vision, Speech, Translation,) leveraged as infrastructure components for applications

Understanding of containerized AI workloads with strong hands-on expertise in AI Developer Tools from Microsoft- Visual Studio, GitHub Copilot, Azure AI Studio, Azure AI Foundry or similar third-party

Ability to integrate OpenAI/Frontier models into cloud environments with secure and scalable infrastructure patterns (from applied AI delivery examples)

Leading Deployment of Complex Multi‑Cloud Solutions (Azure, AWS, GCP):

Architect and deliver enterprise‑grade deployments across Azure, AWS, and GCP with a focus on scalability, security, and performance.

Lead cross‑functional engineering teams to design integrated hybrid/multi‑cloud architectures supporting diverse workload patterns.

Establish governance, cost controls, and compliance guardrails across multi‑cloud environments to ensure operational consistency

Azure Architecture for High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR):

Design and implement resilient Azure infrastructures leveraging availability zones, regions, and geo‑redundant services.

Build robust HA/DR frameworks aligned to RTO/RPO requirements to ensure seamless business continuity.

Implement automated failover, health monitoring, and recovery processes for mission‑critical workloads.

Azure Landing Zone Design & Advanced Networking

Lead design and deployment of Azure Landing Zones aligned with Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework and enterprise governance.

Create scalable hub‑and‑spoke network architectures incorporating VNet peering, private endpoints, and secure segmentation.

Implement advanced networking solutions such as ExpressRoute, Azure Firewall, and secure connectivity patterns.

DevOps, Platform & Developer Productivity 

• Strong expertise in designing and operating CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions, enabling automated build, test, security scanning, and deployment workflows across environments. 
• Proven handson experience with InfrastructureasCode (IaC) using Bicep, ARM, and Terraform, leveraging GitHub Copilot to scaffold modules, generate templates, and propose secure configurations aligned with enterprise standards. 
• Deep understanding of observability and reliability engineering, including centralized logging, metrics, distributed tracing, SLOs, and proactive alerting for production systems. 
• Demonstrated ability to enhance developer productivity and delivery velocity through innersource practices, reusable components, reference implementations, accelerators, and automation. 
• Experience embedding DevSecOps practices into delivery pipelines, including secure coding checks, dependency scanning, secrets management, policy enforcement, and compliance validation. 
• Effective use of GitHub Copilot across the DevOps lifecycle, including authoring pipeline definitions, generating runbooks and release notes, assisting with PR summaries, and accelerating troubleshooting and incident response. 
• Strong grasp of platform engineering principles, building pavedroad solutions and selfservice capabilities that balance speed, governance, and operational excellence. 
• Ability to continuously improve engineering throughput, quality, and system reliability, while maintaining enterprise security and compliance expectations. 
  
  

Container Security Principles & Cloud Platform Design

• Apply container security best practices including image scanning, secrets management, RBAC, and runtime compliance controls.
• Architect secure containerized environments aligned to cloud design principles and Zero Trust foundations.
• Ensure governance, policy enforcement, and continuous compliance across containerized workloads.
  
  

Large‑Scale Cloud Migrations & Azure Monitoring/Security Best Practices

• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF).
• Lead multi‑phase migration programs from discovery and assessment to execution, optimization, and steady-state operations.
• Implement Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Sentinel, and Defender tools for comprehensive observability and security.
• Enforce governance, compliance, and operational best practices throughout migration and post‑migration phases.
  
  

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) & Container Technologies

• Architect and manage enterprise‑grade AKS clusters with strong focus on scalability, networking, and access controls.
• Optimize workload orchestration, autoscaling, cluster governance, and integration with DevOps toolchains.
• Implement container orchestration best practices for secure, resilient, and high‑performing microservices deployments.
  
  

Azure DevOps & Infrastructure Automation (Terraform, Bicep, PowerShell, CLI)

• Build reusable, automated Infrastructure‑as‑Code (IaC) frameworks using Terraform, Bicep, PowerShell, and Azure CLI.
• Implement CI/CD‑driven infrastructure pipelines ensuring consistent, version‑controlled, and auditable deployments.
• Drive automation‑first engineering practices to reduce manual effort, strengthen governance, and accelerate cloud adoption.
  
  

Solutioning, Pre-Sales & Technical Leadership 

• Lead technical solutioning, estimations, and support architecture design during pre-sales and delivery shaping 
• Translate business outcomes into clear architecture, execution plans, and risk mitigation strategies 
• Influence technical direction across multiple teams and engagements 
• Act as a trusted advisor to clients and internal leadership 
• Strong troubleshooting and production support expertise, including performance, reliability, and security issues 
• Sidebyside coding with customer engineering teams to unblock deployments and accelerate time to value 
• Outcome driven engineering focused on business impact, not activity 
• Building reusable assets, accelerators, and reference implementations 
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, high-pressure environments with senior customer stakeholders 
  
  

Certifications 

Two or more of the following certifications:  

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ305) 
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate (AZ204) 
• Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate (AI102) 
• GitHub Certified: GitHub Copilot Professional (GHCP / GH300) 
• Microsoft Certified: Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals (SC900) 
• Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ400) 
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ104) 
• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) 
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Fundamentals (DP900) 
  
  

 

Personal Attributes

• Passion for technology and innovation.
• Ability to interact confidently with senior leaders and clients.
• Strong decision-making skills and a consultative mindset.
• Flexibility to manage in a fast-moving, ambiguous consulting environment.
• Commitment to continuous learning and professional growth.
  
  

Other 

• Embody our culture and values 
  
  

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. 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 with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.

---