Practice Director – Microsoft Cloud & AI Platforms

Description

The Practice Director – Microsoft Cloud & AI Platforms is a senior leadership role with full accountability for the growth, profitability, and long-term success of the Cloud & AI Platforms Practice Group. This Practice Area comprises Azure Migrate, Modernise & Manage, Fabric Unified Data Platform, and Foundry AI, and exists to operate this combined portfolio as a single, high-performing business unit within Nasstar.

Acting as the general manager and owner of the Practice Area, the Practice Director holds end-to-end P&L responsibility and is accountable for building a profitable, scalable business. This includes setting the commercial strategy, shaping and continuously evolving the service portfolio, driving pipeline development, and ensuring that delivery quality and customer outcomes translate into sustained financial performance. The role is an active, front-line leadership position, expected to engage directly with customers, work alongside sellers, and maintain a visible presence in the London office to influence deal progression and practice growth.

The core purpose of the role is to own and grow the business: to accelerate pipeline development, enable sellers and marketing with clear, differentiated propositions, and ensure offerings across cloud platforms, data, and AI remain commercially relevant. This requires continuous evolution of services informed by customer demand, delivery insight, and market change.

Ultimately, the Practice Director – Microsoft Cloud & AI Platforms is accountable for revenue growth, margin performance, and predictable outcomes, while developing strong Practice Leads and teams who can deliver at scale. The role represents the Practice Area at senior level internally and with Microsoft, ensuring the practice operates as a franchise business within Nasstar.

What does Success look like:
| 1. Growth & Financial Targets Achieved: The Cloud & AI Platforms Practice consistently meets or exceeds its combined revenue, margin, and pipeline targets. Growth is driven through close, active partnership with Sales leadership and sellers, with the Practice Director directly supporting pipeline development, opportunity shaping, and deal progression. The practice maintains a healthy, forward-looking pipeline across all three solution areas, with strong conversion rates across both project engagements and recurring services. Why it matters: Predictable growth and profitability demonstrate that the Practice Director is operating the practice as a commercial business unit — enabling sales, accelerating pipeline, and converting strategy into sustainable financial performance.
| 2. Excellence in Delivery & Client Satisfaction: Projects and managed services across cloud, data, and AI platforms are delivered on time, within budget, and to high-quality standards, resulting in excellent customer feedback, repeat business, and positive references. Delivery teams work effectively with managed services operations, and quality issues or escalations are minimal and well managed. Why it matters: Consistent delivery excellence protects Nasstar’s reputation, strengthens long-term customer relationships, and ensures that growth is sustainable.
| 3. Integrated & High-Performing Practice: All three Solution Areas operate in a unified and synergistic way, guided by a clear strategy and complementary offerings. The practice’s portfolio is coherent and compelling, with each Solution Area reinforcing a shared value proposition focused on business outcomes, productivity, and adoption. Why it matters: A cohesive practice enables clearer go-to-market messaging, stronger cross-selling, and better utilisation of people and capability across the portfolio.
| 4. Empowered Leadership & Capability Development: Practice Leads and their teams are high performing, engaged, and continuously developing. The practice has a strong leadership bench and talent pipeline, with clear accountability, capability growth, and succession across all three domains. Why it matters: Empowered leaders and capable teams are essential for scaling the practice, evolving offerings, and maintaining agility..

Key Responsibilities

| Commercial Performance & P&L Accountability: Own overall P&L responsibility for the Practice Area. Set and monitor revenue, margin, and pipeline targets. Work closely with Sales leadership and sellers to drive pipeline growth, shape opportunities, and support strategic deals. Ensure predictable performance through disciplined commercial management.
| Go-to-Market Alignment & Partnership Management: Define and maintain a consistent go-to-market narrative across the Practice Area. Enable Sales and Marketing with outcome-led propositions. Own senior engagement with Microsoft and relevant partners to ensure alignment, programme leverage, and effective joint execution.
| Practice Strategy & Portfolio Leadership: Set the strategic direction and continuously evolve the service portfolio across AI adoption, productivity, and communications. Ensure offerings remain commercially relevant, differentiated, and aligned to customer demand and market change.
| Delivery Oversight & Service Integration: Accountable for delivery quality and customer outcomes across all projects and managed services. Work closely with delivery and operations leadership to maintain standards, manage escalations, and embed continuous improvement.
| People Leadership & Capability Development: Lead, coach, and develop the three Practice Leads. Build a high-performance culture, address capability gaps, sponsor training and recruitment, and ensure succession planning across the Practice Area.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Extensive experience in IT services/consulting, including senior leadership of a practice or service line (e.g., Head of Practice, Practice Lead, Service Line Director, or similar). They should have P&L responsibility or significant revenue/target ownership in their current role.

Expertise: Deep understanding of Microsoft’s Cloud, Data/AI, or Modern Workplace solutions, with experience shaping go-to-market strategies and service offerings. Proven ability to drive sales pipeline (in partnership with sales teams) and oversee delivery quality in their domain.

Leadership & Collaboration: Strong leadership track record – managing teams and developing talent. Comfortable interfacing with executive stakeholders and front-line engagement with customers. Proven collaborative approach, working cross-functionally with sales, delivery, and partners.

Growth Mindset: A strategic, entrepreneurial outlook – eager to “run their own business” within a larger context. The kind of person who thrives on growth challenges and is motivated by building something and owning its success. Open to leaving a larger, established company for a bigger role with more autonomy and impact.

Benefits

At Nasstar, we know the importance of looking after our employees – after all, it’s the team that underpins our business!

In addition to a competitive salary, supportive teams, and a real opportunity to progress in your career with a forward-thinking organisation, our benefits package includes:

• 25 days’ holiday (excluding bank holidays) + Your Birthday Off
• Flexible working – it’s important to maintain a work/life balance, as such, we will consider any written request for flexible working
• Top tech – Leading services and solutions aren’t just for our clients; we supply best-of-breed software and hardware for all our staff too
• 4x annual salary life assurance
• Health cash plan
• Retail discounts and other perks from major brands

We are passionate about helping businesses navigate the rapidly changing and complex world of emerging technologies. We create well-structured, secure, scalable solutions at speed to provide the foundation for groundbreaking change.