• Strong Azure Data & AI Architect Profile with pre-sales solutioning and hands-on delivery leadership • Important (Experience 1): Must have 10+ years overall, with 8+ years in Azure Data/AI architecture, and proven experience architecting and delivering large-scale data platforms on Microsoft Azure • Important (Experience 2 ): Must be able to design end-to-end Azure data architecture (ingestion, storage, transformation, governance, consumption), create reference architectures, and produce solution blueprints, HLD/LLD, and target-state diagrams. • Important (Experience 3): Must have pre-sales experience — customer discovery, technical solutioning for RFPs/RFIs, architecture proposals, effort/cost estimation, delivery roadmaps, and architecture presentations/PoCs/demos. • Important (Experience 4 ): Must have provided hands-on architectural oversight during delivery (Well-Architected Framework), guiding data engineering/science teams on pipeline design, data modeling, MLOps, and deployment, and reviewing code/pipelines/IaC for compliance, performance, and cost • Important (Experience 5 – Microsoft Partner): Must have prior experience in a Microsoft Partner organization, with direct involvement in achieving/maintaining the Data & AI (Azure) Solutions Partner designation, and hands-on contribution to passing the Microsoft Data & AI specialization audit (customer success references, skilling, performance evidence) • Important (Tech skill 1): Must have strong expertise in Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Fabric, and/or Azure Databricks. • Important (Tech skill 2): Must have experience with Azure Machine Learning, Azure OpenAI Service, and building AI/ML or GenAI-powered solutions (Azure AI Foundry, Cognitive Services). • Important (Tech skill 3): Must have a solid understanding of ETL/ELT pipelines, data modeling (dimensional / data vault), and orchestration tools (Azure Data Factory, Synapse Pipelines). • Important (Tech skill 4): Must have familiarity with Microsoft Purview (or equivalent) for data governance, cataloging, and lineage, plus working knowledge of Azure security, networking, and identity (Entra ID, Private Link, Key Vault, RBAC) • Important (Tech skill 5): Must have hands-on scripting/programming in Python, SQL, and/or Spark, and IaC experience (Bicep, ARM templates, or Terraform) for provisioning Azure resources. • Important (Communication): Must have strong client-facing communication, able to present architecture to both technical and executive audiences. • Primary (Certifications): Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure Data Engineer Associate, Azure AI Engineer Associate, or DP-600 (Fabric Analytics Enginee • Primary (Other): Power BI semantic modeling/reporting; MLOps tools (MLflow, Azure ML pipelines, CI/CD for ML); consulting / SI / Microsoft-partner (Solutions Partner) environment experience