Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers.
At Microsoft our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.
We are recruiting to fill the position of:
Job Title: Government Affairs Lead
Job Number: 1075425
Location: Nigeria
Employment Type: Full-Time
Travel: 0-25 %
Role Type: Individual Contributor
Profession: Legal & Corporate Affairs
Job Description
- Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us achieve our mission.
- Microsoft has an immediate opportunity for an experienced professional to manage government affairs work in Nigeria, with a minor focus on Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) as part of the Corporate, External and Legal Affairs (CELA) team in the Middle East & Africa Multi-Country Cluster (MCC).
- The successful candidate will report to the CELA Lead in MCC and will also have “dotted line” reporting responsibilities to the Government Affairs Lead for Middle East & Africa.
Responsibilities
- Program Development – You shape Microsoft’s policy agenda to address complex governmental issues / affairs and business priorities, and develop and/or recommend highly impactful solutions for advancing the agenda while managing risks and consequences; you develop processes to facilitate program outreach and execution, assessing the feasibility of extending the program to advance Microsoft’s policy and/or political agenda.
- External Communication – You direct and align complex or conflicting policy with Microsoft’s goals and strategies; you enhance company reputation by driving a communication framework and messaging for Government Affairs; you participate in and assist in developing internal/external events to drive Government Affairs’ objectives and social media engagement.
- External Relationships – You develop and influence partnerships with coalitions, the Public Sector, and relevant interests groups to achieve desired regulatory and/or legislative outcomes; you lead the implementation of improvements to initiatives based on community and stakeholder feedback; you establish Microsoft’s reputation as a globally trusted provider of technology and you assist in navigating and minimizing roadblocks.
- Internal Collaboration – You advocate for and manage policy issues and lead Microsoft’s engagement with internal stakeholders related to government affairs; you support senior stakeholders by regularly counselling on public policy, geo-political topics and/or cultural context; you provide direction to teammates and you act as a project lead across countries and teams.
Qualifications
- Business Acumen – The ability to understand the parts of the business and their interrelationships. This includes skill in understanding the industry, competition, and expected future developments and challenges, the business’s competitive strengths and weaknesses, opportunities to grow the business and reduce operating costs; and awareness of the environment for opportunities.
- Formal Presentations – The ability to create and deliver formal presentations to others. This includes sharing information on a range of topics in a clear, concise, engaging and convincing manner; commanding the audience’s attention; developing effective presentation materials (e.g., handouts, visual aids); and handling questions or argumentative positions from the audience.
- Documentation – The ability to draft or review policy documents, whitepapers and other external or internal facing documents. This includes the willingness to proactively share documentation with other members of the Government Affairs community and participate in the drafting and reviewing of documentation that applies beyond your geographical scope.
- Corporate Partnerships – The ability to develop and leverage strategic internal and external partnerships and networks to maximize the achievement of business goals. This includes the ability to engage key stakeholders in the development, execution, and evaluation of the Government Affairs agenda and initiatives; and support associate efforts in these areas.
- Corporate Communications – Knowledge of corporate communications best practices and techniques. This includes knowledge of existing and emerging media and/or communication tools (e.g., print, intranet, internet, electronic, broadcast communications). This also includes the ability to apply knowledge of various media to produce communications material and set and execute public relations strategy.
- Cross-Cultural Skills – The ability to conduct business in multiple cultures. This includes the ability to recognize and adapt to cultural differences in work and communication styles across regions or countries.
- Legal And Regulatory Requirements – Knowledge of the rules, regulations, sanctions and other statutory requirements, guidelines, and instructions relating to governing bodies and organizations, both internally and externally.
- Campaign and Lobbying Regulatory Compliance – Knowledge of local laws related to government affairs including campaign finance laws, election laws and regulations, parliamentary rules, ethics rules, lobbying disclosure laws, and contracting requirements. This includes the ability to ensure compliance of internal and external stakeholders.
- Legislative Processes – Knowledge of legislative process and political framework. This includes the ability to track all stages of a bill’s progression from introduction to final passage, theories, principles and practices.
- Government Operations – Knowledge of government operations, practices, and stakeholders. This includes the ability to utilize this information in the planning and execution of company activities and events.
- Political Advocacy, Lobbying and Engagement – Knowledge of public opinion and organized engagement to influence the political process. This includes skill in writing political communication materials, and lobbying to compel or persuade key constituencies and elected officials to take action on behalf of the company. This may include regionally specific political knowledge and lobbying skill.
- Technology Policy – The ability to understand, anticipate, and forecast the impact of technology on policy. This includes knowledge and awareness of technology concepts, evolution, innovation, and internal and external technological advancements and trends; and of policy related to technology, including Cloud, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, devices, accessibility, privacy, telecommunications, and internet topics.
- Product Policy – Knowledge of Microsoft products and how they are impacted by public policy. This includes the ability to participate in technical conversations related to products.
Required / Minimum Qualifications
- 6+ years experience in government affairs, corporate affairs, public policy, or government OR Bachelor’s Degree in Public Policy, Public Administration, political science, Law or related field with 4+ years experience in government affairs, corporate affairs, public policy, or government.
Additional or Preferred Qualifications:
- 5+ years experience in developing and managing strategic relationships to advocate and influence public / technology policy priorities.
- Familiarity with policy and regulatory challenges facing the technology industry in Nigeria and Sub-Sahara Africa.
Benefits and Perks
- Industry leading healthcare
- Savings and investments
- Giving programs
- Educational resources
- Maternity and paternity leave
- Opportunities to network and connect
- Discounts on products and services
- Generous time away.
How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online
Job Title: Solution Specialist – Infrastructure
Job Number: 1071623
Location: Nigeria
Employment Type: Full-time
Role Type: Individual Contributor
Profession: Sales
Travel: 25-50 %
Responsibilities
- 40% of your time will be spent with customers identifying and surfacing new engagements that align with the customer’s business strategy. You will work with partners and others at Microsoft, as well as use our core tools, targeted account lists to identify and engage prioritized customers.
- 40% of your time will be spent on being the key technical leader, trusted advisor and influencer in shaping customer decisions to buy, architect and adopt Microsoft Application Development solutions. You will own winning the technical decision at customers for sales opportunities and usage scenarios, through tailoring your message, bringing ideas to customers, engaging with them to show our technology differentiation, and guiding them in decision making. You will lead presentations, demonstrations, architecture design sessions to explain, demonstrate, and prove to our largest customers the capabilities of Microsoft’s products and services, and how we can make their businesses more successful.
- 20% of your time will be spent on influencing the Microsoft Application Development platform go to market strategies by providing feedback to sales, marketing, and engineering on current and future product requirements and sales blockers you encounter. Sharing practical knowledge with partners to drive the sale, deployment, and adoption of Microsoft solutions.
- You will stay sharp, attaining and maintaining required certifications. You will be recognized for sharing, learning and driving individual work that all result in business impact for customers, partners and within Microsoft. We encourage thought leadership and leadership from every employee and we encourage all our employees to continuously maintain and enhance their technical, sales, professional skills and competitive readiness.
Qualifications
Professional:
- Experienced. 5 to 8 years experience of selling cloud services or application development services to large/global enterprise customers with a focus on cloud application development required
- Account Management. Effective territory/account management: planning, opportunity qualification and creation, stakeholder and executive communication, needs analysis, services/partner engagement, opportunity management and pipeline management required.
- Executive Presence. Experience and expertise selling to LOB decision-makers, technical decision makers & enterprise solution architects by aligning & reinforcing the value of the solution to the customer’s overall business pain and/or strategic opportunities and decision criteria preferred.
- Problem Solver. Ability to solve customer problems through cloud technologies, specifically solutions related to cloud-native apps – containers & serverless, microservices, migration to cloud required.
- Collaborative. Orchestrate and influence virtual teams to pursue sales opportunities and lead v-teams through influence required.
Technical:
- Enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, and technology management. Subject matter expertise in one or more of the following required:
- Application development platforms on public clouds and/or Azure in development languages such as Java, JavaScript, Python, PHP, C#, Node.JS targeting Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, public clouds or Azure.
- Scalable architectures using Azure App Service, API management, serverless technologies, container orchestration (e.g. AKS, Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, Pivotal Cloud Foundry etc.), microservice frameworks etc.
- Software development practices like DevOps and CI/CD tool chains (i.e. Jenkins, Spinnaker, Azure DevOps, GitHub) required
- Understanding of Data & AI technologies in the context of app development (e.g. SQL and NoSQL Databases, Big Data, Cognitive Service, Machine Learning etc.) required)
- Competitive Landscape. Knowledge of cloud development platforms required)
- Partners. Understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs required.
Education
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience required
- Certification in the following technologies preferred: Cloud, mobile, web application development, cloud-native application architecture (i.e. containers, microservices, API management), modern software development techniques like DevOps and CI/CD tool chains (i.e. Jenkins, Spinnaker, Azure developer services, GitHub) and container orchestration systems (i.e. Docker, Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, Cloud Foundry, Azure Kubernetes Service, GitHub). required.
Benefits and Perks
- Industry-leading healthcare
- Savings and investments
- Giving programs
- Educational resources
- Maternity and paternity leave
- Opportunities to network and connect
- Discounts on products and services
- Generous time away
Application Closing Date
Not Specified.
How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online
Job Title: Solutions Specialist – Security
Job Number: 1071630
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Employment Type: Full-time
Role Type: Individual Contributor
Profession: Sales
Travel: 25-50 %
Job Description
- Are you passionate about helping customers drive Digital Transformation? Are you looking for a position where you will be central to driving high impact in one of Microsoft’s top business priorities?
- As the Modern Workplace Specialist, you will be responsible for working with Business Decision Makers to understand their unique business needs. You will be on point to orchestrate an extensive v-team covering multiple areas including Remote Work, Security & Compliance, Teamwork, Insights and Phone System to architect a solution that will empower their employees and drive their business and work in a team, enabling the customers through digital transformation by leveraging the Modern Work of Microsoft 365.
Responsibilities
As a Modern Work Specialist you will:
- Be the M365 sales leader and expert for your assigned set of accounts
- Hunt new Modern Work (remote work, security, compliance, teamwork, insights, meeting and calling) opportunities by identifying and engaging with key business and technical contacts, understanding customers’ business and technology priorities, governance, decision and budget processes, and landing the value proposition of M365 platform.
- Own and drive new revenue growth for Microsoft M365 solutions within assigned accounts by setting and achieving monthly sales forecasts.
- Drive customer intent and demonstrate solution value with envisioning workshops, and demonstrate economic value of our M365 solutions
- Drive Surface penetration in enterprise accounts in coordination with Surface sales specialist
- Deliver customer business transformation and success through accelerated adoption and usage resulting in customer references that can be leveraged in future sales engagements.
- Compete proactively to win new business and share through differentiated customer business value, evaluating customer alternatives and refining competitive strategy
Be the interface to the customer and orchestrate a v-team of resources to solve customer problems:
- Identify customer business and technology challenges and bring them to agreement on the business value of modern work solutions – including detailed relevant BDM, ITDM & Industry use cases, solution briefings and demos, and financial analysis such as Total Cost of Ownership, Cost Take Out & Return on Investment
- Own opportunities from qualification to close by orchestrating an extensive virtual team consisting of technical and partner roles across an extensive portfolio of products, escalating issues for internal business and technical teams, and negotiating final proposals.
- Orchestrate the completion of a successful Customer Success Plan in all new opportunities before opportunity is closed to drive deployment and usage.
- Foster and expand Microsoft’s relationships with Customer Business Decision Makers and lead sales team to blockers to evaluation, contracting, deployment, and usage.
Stay sharp and assist Microsoft transform how we deliver value to customers:
- Continuously nurture and expand sales, business, technology, and competitive readiness.
- Participate in internal Microsoft sales communities and in the broader industry through events, yammer, Teams sites, community gatherings and more.
Professional:
- Strategic Thinking & Execution: Ability to develop sales and business strategy options, while also being able to successfully execute on complex opportunities.
- Excellent Communicator: Strong negotiation, organizational, presentation, financial acumen, written, and verbal communication skills.
- Performer: Highly driven person who consistently exceeds goals and expectations and has the ability, characteristics, and
- determination to compete effectively against skilled and diverse competition.
- Collaborative: Work cohesively with members of the Microsoft sales & services field, Microsoft partners, and Microsoft corporate sales, engineering, and marketing to solve customer and partner issues, leverage best practices, & deliver results.
- Growth Mindset: Ability to overcome and work around problems that are inevitable in rapidly growing businesses – positive approach to problem solving, learning, and development of potential
- Travel Required: 50%.
Sales & Technology:
- Amazing Salesperson: Exhibits outstanding operational excellence – including monthly/quarterly forecasting, building healthy pipeline, CRM entry and hygiene, opportunity management and virtual team orchestration .
- 5+ years of experience in enterprise sales.
- Hunter: Experience driving new sales and customers using innovative approaches, leveraging joint partnership events, social selling (Linkedln) and networking.
- Technical Breadth: Enterprise customer level experience with cloud, hybrid infrastructures, productivity and security technologies, and industry standards recommended.
- Overachiever: Exceeds sales goals in an assigned sales territory.
- Leader: Demonstrated sales and partner management experience with executive communications, engagement and influence
- Proficient: Experience with complex sales training (e.g., Miller Hyman, Spin, Michael Bosworth, Holden, etc.) and sales methodologies
- Challenger Mindset: Competes to win new market share
- Influential: Significant experience delivering persuasive presentations to business decision-makers.
Education
- B.S / BA Degree is required.
- Additional training in sales, business or marketing preferred.
- MBA preferred.
- 5+ years of experience in enterprise sales.
Benefits and Perks
Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work:
- Industry-leading healthcare
- Savings and investments
- Giving programs
- Educational resources
- Maternity and paternity leave
- Opportunities to network and connect
- Discounts on products and services
- Generous time away
How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online
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