Senior Technical Specialist - Security

The Microsoft Security organization’s mission of making the world a safer place has never been more important. As threats become more frequent and sophisticated, we must work to keep our customers safe through our Security Solutions. The Solution Specialist Unit team within the Microsoft Security organization is at the forefront of this effort, engaging directly with customers to contribute to their success. With thousands of global security experts worldwide, $1 billion+ invested annually in security research and development, and the cutting edge AI- based Security innovations, Microsoft is ideally placed to think outside of the box and protecting customers, and partners around the world.  

We are looking for passionate, experienced, and credible Security Technical Specialists with a drive to help solve complex security challenges for our customers, enabling them to help modernize their security architecture and posture.  We are keen to hear your thoughts on how we can further achieve our purpose. Join our team and discover unique opportunities to grow, develop and learn.  

As a Security Technical Specialist, you will be a senior technical sales leader and trusted customer advisor, working with cutting-edge security technologies such as Microsoft M365 Defender, Defender for Cloud and Sentinel. You will lead a virtual team of other internal, partner and consulting resources to help map Microsoft solutions to customer security challenges and priorities, demonstrate and prove our solutions, and win the technical decision enabling the team to achieve and even exceed quarterly and annual revenue targets.   
 

You will spend 75% of your work hours a week on qualified customer work – planning and orchestration, preparation, meetings (technical presentations, demos, POCs, compete positioning, workshops, etc.), while the other 25% of your time will be focused on further growing your technical, industry and competition acumen.  

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

As a Security Technical Specialist, you will be the primary technical point of contact for potential customers during the sales process, owing and driving technical win for security opportunities.

• Deep technical understanding of cloud security architectures, solutions/technologies including Microsoft M365 Defender, Defender for cloud and Sentinel.  

• Coordinate weekly with sellers and manager to understand opportunities, compete scenarios and engagements to focus on, engaging and driving to own and win the technical decisions  

• Remediate blockers; leads and ensures technical wins for Microsoft Security and adjacent technologies. Engages with and reaches out to customers proactively and independently; builds credibility with customers as a trusted advisor for Microsoft Security; and searches for and uses Microsoft Security customer references; and drives customer intent to buy and facilitates handoff to customer success for post sales deployment.  

• Develop strategies and recommendations to improve the client's security posture, shapes technical win plan and tailors Microsoft messaging to audience for security opportunities. Enhances team capabilities for extended detection and response (XDR), zero trust and cloud security and develops differentiated compete strategies for Microsoft Security for assigned customers.  

• Lead technical presentations, demonstrations, workshops, architecture design sessions, explain, demonstrate, and architect the solution to help solve customer security challenges and priorities.   

• Demonstrates and oversees proof of concepts, presents and applies architecture patterns, proves capabilities and integration into customer environment, and drives cross-workload support for Microsoft solutions for security. Leverages insights and coaches' teams to align new or changing technology to customer security needs.   

• A technical specialist is responsible for engaging with other teams within and outside the organization throughout the sales cycle. Engaging partners in sell-with scenarios and supporting their technical capabilities is key to scaling solution delivery.  

You will stay sharp, share your knowledge and best practices enabling further scale and growth for the security business.   

• As a technical specialist you would document and share best practices and learning with others enabling and contributing to the success of others on your team  

• Share knowledge and learnings with partners to drive the sale, deployment, and adoption of Microsoft solutions.  
• Completes required training and obtains relevant product and role certifications aligned to the role and workload/industry.  

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications:

• 7+ years Security pre-sales or technical consulting experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 6+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
  • OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 4+ years technical pre-sales or technical consulting experience
  • OR equivalent experience.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications:

• One or more of Industry certifications such as CISSP, CCSP, iAPP, etc.  

• Hands on technical knowledge of relevant products and solutions, but not limited to: 

• • Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems  

• • Next Gen Web Application Firewalls and Secure Web Gateways.  

• • Threat detection technologies , log analysis and Incident Response  

• • Cloud security technologies, architectures and concepts such as Zero Trust, cloud security posture management, cloud workload protection, Cloud code security and Cloud infrastructure entitlement management.  

• • Cloud Computing: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a Services (PaaS), and Software as a service.   

• • Experience with Microsoft security solutions (M365 Defender, Defender for Cloud, Sentinel) or, one or more related technologies such as Prisma Cloud, Crowdstrike, Proofpoint, Splunk, etc/ is required.   

• • Demonstrated knowledge and understanding of one or more cloud security standards and frameworks such as CIS, NIST, CSA, etc. 

• Technical Sales Acumen: Experience presenting the value of technology solutions and architectures through customer presentations, design sessions, POCs accelerating technical wins. Expertise in extended detection and response (XDR), zero trust and cloud security solutions & architectures 

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.