Director, Global Black Belt

Overview

MCAPS-Core accelerates customer outcomes and business growth. By uniting product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners around a common customer mission, we help customers realize value faster and turn innovation into measurable business impact. Through deep technical expertise and differentiated go-to-market execution, we win competitively, capture market share, and scale repeatable growth motions. We differentiate through value creation - delivering world-class, AI-powered customer experiences that accelerate adoption, strengthen loyalty, and create sustainable competitive advantage, driving growth that outpaces the market.

The Americas AI Apps Global Black Belt (GBB) team drives Microsoft Foundry adoption across Canada, USA, and LATAM, taking lighthouse customers from AI experimentation to production agentic platforms. The team partners with Product and Engineering to shape roadmap from field signal, and with field, STU and partner teams to land and scale Foundry in the region's highest-potential accounts, including the worldwide Foundry 100 program.

The Cloud & AI Platforms organization works with customers at the forefront of this transformation, bringing together Microsoft’s cloud and AI platforms, technical expertise, engineering, and partner ecosystem to help customers move from AI experimentation to production-scale business impact.

We are looking for a Director, Global Black Belt (GBB) to lead Americas high-performing AI+Data team of technical sales and solution leaders focused on accelerating customer adoption of Microsoft’s AI platform and driving some of our most strategic and complex customer transformations.

This leader will combine deep technical and market understanding with exceptional customer leadership, business acumen, and organizational leadership. They will build and develop a world-class GBB team, engage directly with executive customers, partner closely with Sales, Engineering, Product, Customer Success, and Partners, and turn lessons from our most strategic engagements into repeatable approaches that can scale across Microsoft.

This is a leadership role for someone who is equally comfortable engaging in a C-level customer, diving into a complex technology or business challenge, coaching a technical team, shaping a go-to-market motion, and influencing product and engineering priorities.

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.

Responsibilities

Lead Customer AI Transformation

• Engage with senior business and technology executives to shape their cloud and AI strategy and identify opportunities where Microsoft technology can create meaningful business impact.
• Lead the technical strategy for Microsoft's most strategic and complex AI opportunities, helping customers move from experimentation and proof of concept to production-scale adoption.
• Develop a deep understanding of customers' business priorities, technology landscapes, regulatory requirements, and industry dynamics.
• Help customers reimagine applications and business processes around generative AI, agents, data, and cloud platforms rather than simply adding AI to existing solutions.
• Act as a trusted advisor to customers navigating emerging technology choices and architectural decisions.

Accelerate Microsoft Cloud & AI Adoption

• Drive adoption and consumption of Microsoft's Cloud & AI Platforms through high-impact customer engagements.
• Translate Microsoft's product innovation into compelling customer scenarios and repeatable go-to-market motions.
• Help remove technical, architectural, commercial, and organizational barriers preventing customers from moving AI solutions into production.
• Partner with account teams to identify opportunities, develop technical strategies, and accelerate complex opportunities through the sales and adoption life cycle.
• Maintain strong focus on measurable customer outcomes and sustainable platform consumption.
• Lead and Develop a World-Class GBB Team
• Attract, develop, and retain exceptional technical and business talent.
• Build an organization with deep technical expertise, strong customer instincts, commercial discipline, and an AI-first mindset.
• Coach leaders and individual contributors to operate effectively with senior customer executives, account teams, product groups, and engineering organizations.
• Create a leadership bench and actively develop future Microsoft leaders.
• Foster a culture of customer obsession, technical depth, accountability, inclusion, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Build mechanisms that enable individual customer expertise to become organizational capability.
• Create Repeatable IP and Scale
• Turn learnings from strategic customer engagements into reusable architectures, playbooks, demonstrations, accelerators, technical patterns, and sales motions.
• Identify patterns across customers and industries that can become repeatable solutions and field programs.
• Establish mechanisms for sharing best practices and technical insights across the broader Microsoft field.
• Partner with product, engineering, marketing, sales, and partner organizations to take successful customer patterns to market at scale.
• Measure success not only by individual customer outcomes but by the organization's ability to create leverage across many customers.
• Connect Customers, Field and Engineering
• Create a feedback loop between customers, the field, Product, and Engineering.
• Systematically identify recurring product gaps, technical blockers, competitive challenges, and emerging customer requirements.
• Provide clear, evidence-based customer signals that help inform product and engineering priorities.
• Partner with Engineering to accelerate resolution of critical customer blockers and improve product readiness.
• Represent customer perspectives in internal strategy and product discussions.
• Shape the AI-Native GBB Operating Model
• Champion of an AI-first approach to technical sales and customer engagement.
• Explore how agents, generative AI, automation, and emerging Microsoft technologies can increase the leverage and effectiveness of the GBB organization.
• Encourage the team to rethink traditional technical sales processes around AI-assisted and agent-driven workflows.
• Develop new approaches for scaling scarce technical expertise across customers, sellers, partners, and geography.
• Lead organizational change required to operate successfully in a rapidly evolving AI market.
• Drive Business and Operational Excellence
• Establish clear priorities, objectives, and metrics for the organization.
• Maintain strong operational discipline across pipeline, customer engagements, adoption, consumption, technical blockers, and business outcomes.
• Develop mechanisms for identifying and concentrating resources on the highest-impact customer opportunities.
• Use data and customer evidence to continuously improve execution.
• Collaborate across organizational boundaries and influence outcomes without relying on formal authority.

Leadership Qualities

Strategic Thinker

Sees beyond individual opportunities to identify broader customer, market, competitive, and technology patterns. Translates complexity into a clear strategy and aligns resources against the highest-impact priorities.

Customer First Mindset

• Starts with customer outcomes. Builds trusted relationships with senior executives and technical leaders and is willing to go deep into complex customer challenges.
• Technical and AI Fluent
• Understands how cloud, data, applications, foundation models, agents, and AI platforms are reshaping enterprise technology. Maintains sufficient technical depth to challenge assumptions, guide teams, and credibly engage sophisticated customers.

AI-First Leader

Genuinely curious about how AI and agentic technologies will reshape customers, Microsoft, and the GBB profession itself. Pushes the organization to reinvent existing approaches rather than simply adding AI to legacy processes.

Talent Builder

• Has a passion for building exceptional teams. Attracts strong talent, develops people, creates new leaders, and actively champions talent beyond their immediate organization.
• Innovates for Scale
• Looks beyond one customer or one deal. Consistently asks how successful patterns can become repeatable IP, technical assets, field motions, or product improvements that benefit thousands of customers.
• Builds Trust and Credibility
• Operates with integrity, transparency, and sound judgment. Creates an environment where teams can challenge assumptions, learn from failures, and address difficult issues directly.

Leads Through Change

Thrives in ambiguity and rapidly changing markets. Provides clarity when the path is uncertain and brings organizations with them through significant technology and operating-model transitions.

Courageous Communicator

communicate clearly and directly. Encourages constructive debate, challenges conventional thinking when necessary, and provides calm, decisive leadership during difficult customer or business situations.

One Microsoft Collaborator

Builds deep partnerships across Sales, Engineering, Product, Customer Success, Marketing, and the Partner ecosystem. Optimizes for customer and Microsoft outcomes rather than organizational boundaries.

Required/minimum qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Information Security, or related field AND 8+ years experience in technical solution architecture and enterprise sales, business development, strategic consulting, technical consulting, or relevant/prioritized industry (e.g., Finance, Healthcare, Retail) OR equivalent experience.

Other Qualifications

Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This role will require access to information that is controlled for export under export control regulations, potentially under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or Export Administration Regulations, the EU Dual Use Regulation, and/or other export control regulations. As a condition of employment, the successful candidate will be required to provide proof of citizenship, U.S. permanent residency, or other protected status (e.g., under 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(3)) for assessment of eligibility to access the export-controlled information.

To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport. Lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees may verify status using other documents, where applicable.

Preferred qualifications

12+ years of experience across enterprise technology, cloud, AI, technical sales, solution engineering, product, consulting, or related disciplines.

Experience leading high-performing technical, sales, solution, engineering, or customer-facing teams.

Experience driving large and complex enterprise technology transformations.

Understanding of cloud computing, modern application platforms, data, generative AI, AI agents, and emerging enterprise AI architectures.

Experience engaging and influencing C-level business and technology executives.

Experience translating complex technology into business value and measurable customer outcomes.

Experience leading complex customer opportunities involving multiple technologies, stakeholders, partners, and organizational boundaries.

Experience creating scalable programs, technical solutions, intellectual property, or go-to-market motions from individual customer engagements.

Business and commercial acumen with the ability to connect technical strategy to adoption, consumption, and growth.

Experience influencing Product and Engineering organizations using structured customer evidence and market insights.

Experience leading organizational or business transformation through significant technology or market change.

Understanding of competitive dynamics across cloud and AI platforms.

Communication, executive presence, and relationship-building skills experience.

Analytical and operational management experience with the ability to move between strategic thinking and detailed execution.

Leadership experience in enterprise AI, cloud platforms, developer platforms, data platforms, or AI applications.

Experience with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft's AI platform, including Microsoft Foundry and the broader Microsoft AI ecosystem.

Experience designing or deploying generative AI and agentic AI solutions in enterprise production environments.

Experience building or leading specialized technical sales, solution engineering, consulting, or field engineering organizations.

Experience taking emerging technologies from early customer adoption to repeatable, scaled field execution.

Experience creating technical IP, accelerators, architectures, or field programs that have scaled across multiple customers or regions.

Experience working closely with engineering and product teams to translate customer requirements into product improvements.

Experience leading transformation across a large, matrixed global organization.

Solution Sales Advisory M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $133,000 - $222,700 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $170,300 - $239,800 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

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.

Insights from previous hires

Top skills: Account Management, Business Strategy, Analytics, Business Transformation, Change Management, Business Development, Business

Common previous titles: Director Global, Senior Director, Director North America, Senior, Senior Specialist, Senior Manager Sales, Director Supply Chain, Senior Digital Account Executive, Senior Solution Architect, Director