PreSales Lead / Solution Architect – Cloud Transformation & Managed Services

Job Description Presales Lead / Solution Architect Cloud Transformation & Managed Services

Lead presales solutioning for Cloud Engineering, Migration & Modernization, and Managed Services. Partner with Sales, Delivery, and Practice leadership to qualify opportunities, architect hybrid/multicloud solutions, build credible estimates and proposals, and ensure clean handover to delivery via strong governance, risk controls, and commercial clarity.

Position Details

• Reporting to: Head of Practice
• Scope: Cloud Transformation (Migration & Modernization) + Managed Services
• Ecosystem: Hybrid / Public / Multi-Cloud (AWS, Azure, IBM, GCP, OCI) + Private Cloud
• Experience: 14+ years total; 810+ years in presales solutioning / cloud architecture for M&M and/or managed services

Key Responsibilities

1) PreSales Deal Shaping

• Run discovery and workshops; capture business outcomes, current state, NFRs, constraints, and success criteria.
• Define target architecture, delivery approach, timeline, resourcing, assumptions/exclusions, dependencies, and risk plan.
• Own estimation and proposal/SOW technical sections; support client presentations up to CXO level.
• Drive bid governance and go/nogo with clear scope boundaries, quality gates, and handover checklist.

2) Cloud Architecture & Standards

• Create reference architectures (landing zone, IAM, network segmentation, security controls, governance guardrails).
• Select fitforpurpose patterns/services for compute, containers/serverless, data, integration, observability, resilience, DR/BCP.
• Set standards for IaC, CI/CD, environment strategy, release governance, and SRE/operations practices.
• Ensure security/compliance alignment (encryption, keys, logging/audit, least privilege).

3) Migration & Modernization Solutioning

Define strategy using the 6R approach; recommend waves based on app/data assessment and dependencies.

Build wave plan, cutover/rollback, test strategy, and data migration approach; define modernization roadmap (apps/MW/DB).

Promote accelerators for discovery, assessment, migration execution/validation, and operational readiness.

4) Managed Services Design (Annual TCV / Run Model)

Define operating model (L1/L2/L3, oncall, incident/problem/change, service requests, release governance).

Define observability & reliability (SLO/SLI, monitoring/alerting/logs/traces, capacity, DR/BCP, hyper care steady state).

Produce MS artifacts: service catalog, SLA/OLA, RACI, runbooks, KB approach, continuous improvement cadence.

5) Commercials, Estimation & Risk Controls

Create WBSbased estimates and pricing inputs (T&M/fixed/outcome/MS) with explicit assumptions and exclusions.

Build cost models (cloud consumption, licensing, tools, support costs) and optimization levers (FinOps).

Maintain risk register and dependency log; enforce signoffs and scope/change control fundamentals.

AI/MLEnabled Solutioning & AIOps

• Use Amazon Bedrock & SageMaker AI, and Azure OpenAI (Foundry Models) + Azure Machine Learning to speed discovery, rationalization, and migration wave planning using governed enterprise data.
• Apply AIOps practices via Amazon DevOps Guru/CloudWatch and Azure Monitor (App Insights/Log Analytics) to improve anomaly detection, RCA speed, and SLA/SLO reliability outcomes in MS solutioning.
• Use Azure AI Search and Bedrock Knowledge Bases to securely ground proposals, runbooks, and solution artifacts on private enterprise content (RAG/agentic retrieval).

Stakeholder Management & Practice Contribution

• Partner with Sales/Accounts/Delivery/Partners to shape pipeline, build joint offerings, and align partner programs.
• Coach presales engineers/architects; build reusable templates, reference architectures, and accelerators.
• Contribute to practice growth via case studies, IP, and internal enablement.
• Deliverables
• Architecture deck + target state diagrams; discovery pack (requirements, NFRs, assumptions, constraints).
• Migration factory approach + wave plan; modernization roadmap; cutover/testing strategy.
• Managed services pack service catalog, SLA/OLA, RACI, runbooks, monitoring strategy, transition plan.
• Estimate/WBS/resourcing/timeline; proposal/SOW technical sections; risk register & dependency log.

KPIs (Success Measures)

• Winrate on qualified opportunities; pipeline conversion and deal velocity.
• Estimate accuracy; reduced scope creep via assumptions/NFR coverage and governance.
• MS attach rate / annual TCV influence; transitiontoops readiness and handover quality.
• Reuse of standard assets and accelerators; customer satisfaction during solutioning/handover.

Required Skills

• Hybrid/multicloud architecture across AWS/Azure plus one of IBM/GCP/OCI; strong security/network/IAM/governance knowledge.
• Migration & modernization program design (assessment, wave planning, execution strategy, cutover).
• Managed services design (ITIL processes, SLA/OLA, RACI, ITSM operations, transitiontoops).
• Strong estimation/proposal skills; confident client communication and executive presentation.

Preferred / Tools / Certifications

• Goodtohave: Landing zones (AWS Control Tower, Azure Landing Zones), DevOps/platform engineering, Kubernetes, FinOps.
• Tools: Terraform/CloudFormation/ARM/Bicep; Azure DevOps/GitHub/GitLab/Jenkins; Prometheus/Grafana/ELK/APM; ServiceNow/JSM.
• Certifications: AWS SA (Assoc/Pro), Azure Solutions Architect Expert; plus GCP/OCI/IBM as applicable; ITIL; CKA/CKAD (optional.