Business Development Manager - Microsoft Cloud & AI

As a Cloud & AI Presales Consultant, you’ll play a pivotal role in inspiring clients and evangelizing SoftwareOne’s capabilities. You’ll proactively create demand and close business across net-new and existing accounts, working alongside our Account Managers to open doors with senior stakeholders, shape early discovery, and build trusted relationships that turn white space into well-qualified pursuits. Working closely with our sales teams, and technical teams you’ll scope and size opportunities effectively and drive momentum across the deal cycle in a commercially targeted role.

Leveraging deep industry knowledge and broad technology expertise, you’ll help customers map strategy and translate business needs into pragmatic Azure solutions—spanning Azure core services, Azure OpenAI, data platforms, and Microsoft Fabric—to accelerate cloud and AI adoption.

You’ll confidently hold a room of mixed stakeholders, bringing enough technical fluency to ask incisive questions without needing to be the most technical person there, while partnering with our architects and delivery teams to go deep as required. As a thought leader you’ll land our go-to-market strategy, identify cross- and up-sell opportunities, and help customers optimize and innovate.

Role & Responsibilities

Opportunity Development

• Map white space within accounts alongside the Account Manager; identify new lines of business, and initiatives where Azure, Azure OpenAI, Data, and Microsoft Fabric can unlock value.
  
  
• Build thoughtful value hypotheses tied to business outcomes (cost, risk, growth, experience) to secure executive-level conversations and open new streams of demand.
  
  
• Co-own account penetration strategy with sales; ensure multi-threaded engagement across business and IT, and proactively unblock access where existing relationships are thin.
  
  
• Lead early discovery with senior stakeholders to surface pain points, shape problem statements, and align our capabilities to measurable outcomes.
  
  Scoping and Sizing Opportunities
  
  
• Collaborate closely with the sales team and clients to comprehensively assess requirements, objectives, constraints and what SoftwareOne can offer.
  
  
• Utilize analytical skills to scope and size opportunities effectively, ensuring alignment with client expectations and organizational capabilities.
  
  
• Define margins for proposed solutions in coordination with the sales and delivery teams, ensuring profitability while meeting client expectations.
  
  Market Research and Insights
  
  
• Stay updated on industry trends, competitor offerings, and emerging technologies to provide valuable insights and enhance our solution offerings.
  
  
• Act as a subject matter expert during client interactions, presentations, and workshops, demonstrating our capabilities and value proposition effectively.
  
  Sales Support and Collaboration
  
  
• Participate in strategic planning sessions to contribute insights and recommendations for business growth and expansion into new markets or service areas.
  
  Skills & Competencies
  
  
• Strong understanding of Cloud, Data and AI services, particularly when related to Microsoft Azure.
  
  
• Broad Azure literacy: landing zones, governance, identity (Entra ID), networking, security, and FinOps fundamentals.
  
  
• Data platform know-how: lakehouse concepts, Microsoft Fabric, Azure data services (e.g., Data Factory, Synapse), and BI adoption patterns.
  
  
• Azure OpenAI understanding: model selection, prompting basics, RAG patterns, safety/guardrails, and responsible AI considerations.
  
  
• Understanding at a high-level software development methodologies (Agile, Scrum, Waterfall), frameworks (Spring, .NET, Django), and modern tools like Github.
  
  
• Experience in applying AI and ML examples to real-world problems across different domains such as healthcare, finance, retail, etc.
  
  
• Awareness of security best practices in cloud environments including identity and access management (IAM), encryption, and network security.
  
  
• Understanding of compliance requirements such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, and how they impact cloud deployments.
  
  Required Skills:
  
  
• Proven ability to penetrate accounts: multi-threading, org mapping, and securing senior stakeholder access.
  
  
• Strong value-led prospecting: crafting hypotheses tied to outcomes (cost, risk, growth, experience) to open new conversations.
  
  
• Track record of winning large-scale professional services programmes of work.
  
  
• Experience working with, presenting to, and negotiating with; C-Level executives, IT, lines of business, procurement, finance and legal in large deals.
  
  
• Strategic thinker, with the ability to execute with pace and precision.
  
  
• Team player, able to collaboratively work within a team, as well as with wider stakeholders on a daily basis.
  
  
• Ability to identify business challenges, and articulate outcomes that technology can deliver to both business and technical leaders.
  
  
• Experience in driving revenue growth and exceeding sales targets.
  
  
• Excellent presentation, communication and interpersonal skills