Microsoft is seeking a highly experienced Strategic Account Director Manager to lead a team of Strategic Account Executives supporting some of the world's largest and most strategically important multinational enterprises.
This role will be responsible for leading the Regional Global Enterprise (RGE) sales team covering strategic customers headquartered in Japan with extensive global operations. The successful candidate will manage account executives located outside Japan and provide leadership across complex, multi-geography customer engagements involving senior executives, global stakeholders, and large-scale digital transformation initiatives.
As a second-line strategic business leader and people manager, you will drive customer business outcomes, revenue growth, executive engagement, and organizational excellence across a portfolio of global strategic accounts. The role requires strong leadership, executive presence, and the ability to orchestrate resources across sales, customer success, engineering, services, industry, and partner organizations.
The position is based in the United Kingdom and offers a unique opportunity to influence Microsoft's most important customer relationships, including organizations with global scale, significant technology investments, and complex business transformation agendas.
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
People Leadership
- Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing team of Regional Global Enterprise Strategic Account Executives located across multiple countries and regions outside Japan.
- Foster an inclusive, accountable, and customer-focused culture aligned with Microsoft's leadership principles and growth mindset.
- Drive talent development, succession planning, organizational health, employee engagement, and performance excellence.
- Guide team members through complex customer situations while supporting career growth and leadership development.
Strategic Account Leadership
- Provide leadership and oversight for some of Microsoft's most significant strategic enterprise customers, including global organizations with large-scale transformation initiatives.
- Ensure development and execution of comprehensive multi-year account strategies focused on business outcomes, revenue growth, AI transformation, cloud adoption, and long-term partnership expansion.
- Lead executive engagement strategies with C-suite executives, board members, and senior business leaders.
- Support complex commercial negotiations, executive sponsorship programs, and large-scale enterprise agreements.
Business Growth and Execution
- Deliver predictable business performance through disciplined pipeline management, forecasting, and execution rigor.
- Identify and accelerate growth opportunities across Microsoft's solution portfolio, including AI, Security, Modern Work, Business Applications, Data & AI, and Azure.
- Drive cross-solution collaboration and customer-centric selling motions across Microsoft's field organization.
- Ensure alignment between customer business priorities and Microsoft's strategic investments.
Global Leadership and Collaboration
- Act as a key leadership partner across global account teams supporting multinational customers headquartered in Japan.
- Influence decision-making across highly matrixed international organizations spanning Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Japan.
- Partner closely with Customer Success, Industry Solutions, Engineering, Marketing, Finance, Legal, and Partner organizations to maximize customer outcomes and business growth.
- Represent Microsoft in executive briefings, industry forums, strategic planning reviews, and high-profile customer engagements.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Business, Economics, Engineering, Technology, or related field, or equivalent industry experience.
- Significant enterprise sales, strategic account management, business development, consulting, or executive relationship management experience.
- Extensive people management experience leading enterprise sales or strategic account teams.
- Demonstrated success leading large, complex, multinational customer relationships with executive-level stakeholders.
- Proven ability to manage strategic accounts with significant annual revenue, large commercial agreements, and multi-country stakeholder environments.
- Experience leading geographically distributed teams across multiple countries and cultures.
- Strong executive presence with the ability to influence senior customer executives and internal stakeholders.
- Exceptional communication, negotiation, leadership, and organizational skills.
- Ability to travel internationally as business needs require.
Preferred Qualifications
- MBA or advanced degree preferred.
- Experience leading global strategic accounts within the technology, telecommunications, systems integration, or large enterprise sectors.
- Experience managing customer relationships involving annual contract values exceeding $100M.
- Deep understanding of AI transformation, cloud computing, cybersecurity, enterprise applications, and digital business innovation.
- Experience working with multinational organizations headquartered in Japan or Asia.
- Demonstrated success leading large matrixed organizations through influence rather than direct authority.
- Experience developing and executing executive sponsorship and global account governance programs.
Strategic Account Management M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across United Kingdom is £ 120,100.00 - £ 202,000.00 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.
Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/corporate-pay/united-kingdom-corporate-pay.html
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.
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