Senior Cloud Solution Architect - Cybersecurity Exercises - CTJ - TS/SCI

Overview
Senior Cloud Solution Architect – Cybersecurity Exercises
Microsoft Federal delivers a single unified organization centered around our customer. This organization is a first-of-its-kind for Microsoft, bringing together expertise, knowledge, and insights across our teams. All critical customer functions are brought under the same organizational umbrella, bringing the breadth and depth of our expertise into laser focus on serving the U.S. Federal Government.
We are committed to empowering our teams, building upon our strategic investments, and delivering the technology to achieve federal missions. As our customers pursue their work, from defending the nation, to serving its people in challenging times, they look to Microsoft to help them innovate, and they expect end-to-end engagement tailored to their needs.
We aspire to...
Deliver the best technology to enable mission-critical work
Support fast-paced innovation with the U.S Federal Government
Drive focused, thoughtful, end-to-end delivery tailored to unique customer needs
Continuously advance security processes within our long-standing engagement approach
Develop products with inclusivity and accessibility at the core
What Joining The Microsoft Team Means
Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and security, data protection, and privacy are vital pillars in our mission. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging our diverse 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 to achieve our mission.
Microsoft continues to invest over $20B over the next 5 years in cybersecurity, including providing our customers with services and solutions that integrate across the ecosystem by connecting all your identities, endpoints, apps, emails, docs and clouds to help you close critical gaps in coverage, reduce risk, and save costs with a streamlined security portfolio.
Customer Success: Microsoft aspires to help our customers achieve their own digital transformation, leveraging the power of Microsoft Cloud solutions and support offerings. To this end, Microsoft invests in a dedicated Customer Success team that will help Microsoft customers successfully realize their business outcomes.
Security Solution Area: Microsoft aspires to help our customers achieve their secure digital transformation, leveraging the power of Microsoft Cloud security solutions and support offerings.
Senior Security Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) – Blue Team Lead (Cyber Exercises)
We are seeking a senior cybersecurity professional to lead defender-focused (Blue Cell) capabilities within large-scale cyber exercises. This role is responsible for designing, operationalizing, and continuously improving how participants detect, investigate, and respond to adversary activity in realistic, mission-aligned scenarios.
The Blue Team Lead defines the defender experience: developing workflows, training objectives, evaluation criteria, and reference materials that reflect real-world security operations. This role ensures exercises produce measurable improvements in customer detection and response capabilities across both proactive threat hunting and reactive incident response.
Cyber exercises operate as live environments where timing, tooling, adversary actions, and participant behavior evolve dynamically. The Blue Team Lead ensures defender guidance is actionable, outcomes are measurable, and lessons learned translate into lasting operational improvements.
This role requires a deep understanding of the full exercise ecosystem, including red team operations, control cell orchestration, and customer mission context, to ensure defender activities are realistic, synchronized, and impactful.
Responsibilities
Microsoft Federal is seeking individuals passionate about advancing cybersecurity readiness through immersive, hands-on exercises that strengthen operational resilience for U.S. Federal agencies. Candidates for this role will demonstrate technical expertise, effective facilitation skills, and a commitment to driving measurable security outcomes. As a Senior Security Cloud Solution Architect focused on Cyber Exercises, you will support the planning, facilitation, and delivery of immersive cybersecurity exercises for U.S. Federal customers. Working alongside senior CSAs, you will help design scenarios, operationalize technical solutions, and drive measurable security outcomes through hands-on engagement and collaboration. Responsibilities include:
Blue Cell Design Authority
Own the design of defender-facing content across exercises, including workflows, tasks, success criteria, and evaluation frameworks.
Ensure all defender activities align to realistic security operations and customer mission requirements.
Establish and run the daily briefing rhythm to confirm customer findings.
Blue Team-focused Stakeholder Orchestration
Align exercise scope, objectives, and communications with account team, customer, and delivery stakeholders; coordinate control‑cell and intelligence for injects; manage blue team operations schedule.
Represent the program in customer briefings and executive touchpoints; set expectations and ensure outcomes are landed with account teams.
Translate complex technical tradecraft into clear, outcome-focused narratives for senior customer leadership and non-technical stakeholders.
Ensure defensive actions remain grounded in realistic operational constraints and decision-making
Drive Business Outcomes
Translate exercise results into actionable recommendations for improving customer security operations.
Own and lead defender outcomes aligned to strategic customer objectives, accelerating adoption and operationalization of Microsoft security tools through repeatable, measurable defender workflows.
Partner with account teams to translate exercise findings into follow-on opportunities (control fixes, detection coverage improvements, and roadmap-aligned next steps).
Track and communicate exercise-driven outcomes (skill uplift, detection gaps closed, and prioritized remediation guidance) in a way that is actionable for customer leadership and Microsoft account teams.
Design Defender Workflows & Hunt Content
Develop and govern defender-facing content: workflows, evaluation points, and success criteria aligned to security operations and customer mission needs.
Build and maintain reusable hunting content packages (KQL quick sheets, investigation playbooks, validation checklists, and scenario-aligned hunt guides) that scale delivery consistency.
Translate red team TTPs into defender detection expectations (telemetry sources, logging gaps, validation steps), enabling rapid iteration during delivery and clear improvements post-exercise.
Lead after-action analysis focused on defensive performance, detection coverage, and response effectiveness.
Drive post-exercise refinement of defender guidance, detection expectations, and learning materials based on observed outcomes and identified gaps.
Mentorship & Collaboration
Mentor team members in defensive tradecraft, analytical reasoning, and exercise delivery..
Lead regular team knowledge-sharing sessions that improve blue-team hunting quality and delivery consistency across parallel exercises.
Develop and standardize playbooks, methodologies, and content to improve consistency across the team.
Partner tightly with red team and control-cell to ensure timing, injects, and debriefs produce maximum defender learning value and actionable takeaways.
Travel is an integral part of this position. You should be willing to travel as is demanded by the needs of our customers and our business. This position requires approximately 50-75% overnight travel.
Embody our Culture and Values
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, or related field AND 4+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, information technology (IT) consulting/support, systems administration, network operations, software development/support, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting
OR equivalent experience.
Other Requirements
Security Clearance Requirements: Candidates must be able to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized sec

Work arrangement
Yes