Microsoft

Frontier Industry Advisor- Telecommunications

Microsoft • $170K — $239K *
Telecommunications & Hardware
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Master's or Bachelor's Degree in relevant field (Computer Science, Engineering, etc.) with significant customer-facing experience.
  • 5-7 years in operations or enterprise-level improvement program management for Master's Degree holders; 7+ years for Bachelor's Degree holders.
  • Preferred: 13-15 years in telecommunications or management consulting roles with customer engagement.
  • Experience in consultative sales or advisory positions, shaping transformation strategies.
  • Demonstrated expertise in leading complex, multi-year transformational deals.

Responsibilities

  • Lead business process transformation grounded in TM Forum frameworks, identifying value leaks and designing target states.
  • Reengineer core process domains across various operational areas for holistic transformation.
  • Integrate process transformation with data foundations and OSS/BSS modernization for executable designs.
  • Serve as a trusted advisor on AI integration, facilitating operator executive understanding of its business impacts.
  • Shape large, complex transformation deals that require executive sponsorship and cross-unit collaboration.
  • Identify customer needs across a diverse telecom value chain and advocate for outcome-based approaches.
  • Facilitate Forward Deployed Engineering to develop AI solutions alongside customer teams.

Benefits

  • Opportunity to lead industry standards in AI and telecommunications transformation.
  • Engagement with high-level executives and stakeholders across major US carriers.
  • Participation in pioneering initiatives in autonomous networks and AI enabling.
  • Dynamic collaboration across a multidisciplinary team of experts at Microsoft.
  • Access to cutting-edge technology and frameworks to address real-world telecom challenges.
Full Job Description
Responsibilities

Business Process Transformation

Leads business process transformation conversations grounded in TM Forum reference frameworks (eTOM, SID, Open Digital Architecture, and Open APIs), using them as a shared language with the customer to map the current operating model, identify where value leaks, and design the target state. Aligns transformation designs to the ODA component model and to GSMA Open Gateway network API standards where service exposure and monetization are in scope, so that redesigned processes and productized network capabilities are interoperable across the industry rather than bespoke to one operator.

Works with the operator to reengineer core process domains end to end rather than optimizing in isolation, spanning operations (assurance, fulfillment, billing and revenue management, resource and service management), strategy, infrastructure and product, and enterprise management. Identifies where AI, agents, and automation collapse process steps, remove handoffs, and shift work from human in the loop to human on the loop.

Connects process transformation to the underlying architecture, including data foundations, OSS/BSS modernization, API exposure, and ODA aligned componentization, so that redesigned processes are executable and not just documented. Champions process simplification and standardization as a prerequisite to scaled AI, helping the customer avoid automating broken processes.

Autonomous Networks

Acts as a leading voice on autonomous networks, helping the operator define its ambition against the TM Forum Autonomous Networks maturity levels (L0 to L5), assess where it is today, and build a credible, staged path toward higher levels of autonomy across RAN, transport, core, and cloud domains. Draws on TM Forum Catalyst projects, industry benchmarks, and GSMA operator programmes to ground the roadmap in what peers are actually achieving, and contributes Microsoft's learnings back into those forums.

Shapes opportunities across the autonomy stack, including closed loop assurance, intent based operations, self configuration, self healing and self optimization, predictive maintenance, anomaly detection and root cause analysis, network digital twins, energy optimization, capacity and traffic forecasting, and AI agents operating within network operations centers.

Helps the customer work through the hard parts that determine whether autonomy scales: data quality and topology models, observability, guardrails and trust boundaries, human oversight and escalation design, safety and rollback, regulatory and outage reporting obligations, and change management for network operations teams. Connects that ambition to measurable outcomes such as reduced mean time to restore, fewer truck rolls, lower operating cost per site, improved network availability and customer perceived quality, energy savings, and the ability to run a larger, more complex network without a proportional increase in headcount.

Leading Customers and Partners into the AI Era

Serves as a trusted advisor to operator executives on what the AI era means for their business, not only how to apply AI to existing operations, but how competitive advantage, cost structures, workforce models, partner ecosystems, and revenue mix change as AI matures. Helps leaders see where their current model becomes less relevant, and where new relevance can be built.

Builds and evangelizes a forward looking industry point of view: the operator as an AI enabled digital service provider, the monetization of network capability through APIs and edge, the role of the telco in the national and enterprise AI value chain, sovereign and regulated AI infrastructure, and the shift from selling connectivity to selling outcomes. Leads partners into the same transition, working with global systems integrators, network equipment vendors, and independent software vendors to build joint capability and co create industry solutions.

Represents Microsoft in industry bodies and standards communities, including TM Forum (Catalysts, working groups, ODA and Autonomous Networks initiatives, Digital Transformation World) and the GSMA (Open Gateway, industry AI and network API workstreams, Mobile World Congress and regional events), building Microsoft's credibility as an industry player, shaping emerging standards in directions that serve customers, and using those platforms to convene operators and partners around a shared AI agenda.

Large and Complex Deal Shaping

Originates, shapes, and helps close large, complex, multi year transformation deals: engagements that span multiple business units, technology domains, and partners, involve significant customer commitment, and typically require executive sponsorship on both sides.

Constructs the commercial and business value narrative for these pursuits, covering the outcome hypothesis, the baseline, the value at stake, the phasing, the risk profile, and the investment case that a CFO and a board will accept. Works backward from the customer's own strategic and financial commitments rather than forward from a product catalog.

Navigates long, non linear pursuit cycles and the consensus driven decision making of a large US carrier, building coalitions across the customer's organization, managing multiple sponsors and skeptics, sustaining momentum through leadership changes and budget cycles, and knowing when to pursue and when to withdraw. Orchestrates the extended pursuit team, including account leadership, specialists, solution architects, forward deployed engineering, consulting, legal, commercial, finance, and partners, into a single coherent customer facing motion, and maintains discipline on qualification, deal health, and forecasting.

Sales Execution and Account Planning

Identifies customer needs, industry readiness, and business value opportunities across the telecom value chain, including consumer mobile and fixed broadband, fixed wireless access, enterprise and wholesale services, network planning and engineering, RAN and core operations, service assurance, field operations, customer care, retail store operations, marketing and personalization, subscriber acquisition and retention, billing and charging, revenue assurance and fraud, OSS/BSS modernization, data and analytics, 5G standalone and network APIs, edge and multi access edge computing, IoT and private networks, and the adjacent media, advertising, and digital services businesses major US carriers operate within their groups.

Applies an outcomes inward approach to shape market making opportunities, starting with the customer outcome and working backward to the process, architecture, data, AI, security, governance, and change management requirements needed to scale. Identifies, advances, and scales high impact Frontier AI scenarios for the account, and helps the customer move beyond pilots to enterprise ready transformation by rethinking operating models, redesigning workflows, modernizing data foundations, and embedding responsible AI, security, and governance at scale.

Serves as the telecommunications industry subject matter expert in account planning for the United States, engaging internal stakeholders and partners, reviewing customer industry plans, and lending credibility by aligning Microsoft capabilities to strategic operator priorities. Drives stakeholder mapping to identify and influence key decision makers, creates multi horizon roadmaps for the most impactful parts of the account, and builds sustained relationships with senior external decision makers.

Forward Deployed Engineering

Champions Forward Deployed Engineering, a core motion of Microsoft's Frontier Company strategy, in which multidisciplinary, AI accelerated engineering teams embed with customers to co build and productionize AI and agent solutions. Helps the customer move from AI ambition and isolated pilots to embedded, co engineered, production grade solutions.

Actively identifies, originates, and qualifies these opportunities across the account, recognizing the signals of a strong engagement: a material business problem with senior executive sponsorship, clear intent to reach production, a need for embedded engineering rather than staff augmentation, and meaningful use of the Microsoft platform. Partners closely with engineering crews throughout the engagement lifecycle and acts as an industry front door, connecting business sponsors, account teams, and delivery leaders around a shared agenda.

Collaboration, Partners, and Industry Expertise

Collaborates with account teams, business strategy leads, business development managers, solution architects, technical specialists, industry solution teams, consulting teams, and partner organizations to plan, orchestrate, and execute customer opportunities. Works across the Microsoft partner ecosystem, including global systems integrators and network vendors, to bring together capabilities that solve complex telecom business problems, and coordinates with commercial, legal, compliance, engineering, and customer success teams to advance strategic programs.

Proactively builds and maintains deep knowledge of the industry, including standards and frameworks (TM Forum eTOM, SID, ODA, Open APIs and Autonomous Networks levels, GSMA Open Gateway, 3GPP and O-RAN developments), market trends, policy implications (spectrum allocation, consumer privacy and CPNI, network resilience and outage reporting obligations, public safety obligations, content and advertising regulation), and competitors, acting as a subject matter expert and informing decisions on pursuit or withdrawal.

Leads communication across the ecosystem, providing feedback to sales, marketing, and engineering teams on future product trends and sales blockers, advising and presenting at industry and customer communities across the United States and internationally, and establishing a learning baseline for less experienced colleagues.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

  • Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Health Sciences, Supply Chain, Education, Business or related field AND 5+ years customer-facing experience in operations, enterprise-level improvement program management, product management, transportation, hospitality, automotive, consumer goods, financial services, retail, management consulting, consultative selling, public sector, technology or industry-relevant equivalent management or technical work experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Health Sciences, Supply Chain, Education, Business or related field AND 7+ years customer-facing experience in operations, enterprise-level improvement program management, product management, transportation, hospitality, automotive, consumer goods, financial services, retail, management consulting, consultative selling, public sector, technology or industry-relevant equivalent management or technical work experience OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications
  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 15+ years customer facing experience in telecommunications, management consulting, consultative selling, technology, or industry relevant equivalent management or technical work experience; OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 13+ years such experience; OR equivalent experience.


  • Experience in a consultative sales, advisory, strategy, business development, transformation, or te

About Microsoft

Microsoft is an American multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services. Microsoft’s devices and consumer (D&C) licensing segment licenses the Windows operating system and related software, Microsoft Office for consumers, and the Windows Phone operating system. The company’s computing and gaming hardware segment provides Xbox gaming and entertainment consoles and accessories, second-party and third-party video games, and Xbox Live subscriptions; surface devices and accessories; and Microsoft PC accessories. Its phone hardware segment offers Lumia smartphones and other non-Lumia phones. Its D&C segment provides Windows Store, Xbox Live transactions, and Windows phone store; search advertising; display advertising; Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal; first-party video games; and other consumer products and services as well as operating retail stores. Microsoft’s commercial licensing segments license server products, including Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (CALs); Windows Embedded; Windows operating system; Microsoft Office for business, including Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and related CALs; Microsoft Dynamics business solutions; and Skype. Its commercial segment offers enterprise services, including premier support services and Microsoft consulting services; commercial cloud comprising Office 365 Commercial, other Microsoft Office online offerings, Dynamics CRM Online, and Microsoft Azure; and other commercial products and online services. The company markets and distributes its products through original equipment manufacturers, distributors, and resellers, as well as online.

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181,000 employees
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$1,762.4 billion
Industry
Net Income
$51.3 billion
Founded
1975
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