Security Architect — Microsoft Security Platform

<p><b>Security Architect — Microsoft Security Platform</b></p><br /><p><b>Practice</b></p><p>Cyber Security, Avanade India</p><p><b>Location</b></p><p>Bengaluru / Delhi NCR (Hybrid)</p><br /><p><b>Experience</b></p><p>12–14 years in the cyber security domain, with current, hands-on design and implementation experience across the Microsoft security platform — Microsoft Sentinel, Defender, Entra ID, Intune and Purview</p><br /><p><b>Role Summary</b></p><p>Avanade India’s Cyber Security practice is looking for a Security Architect with strong hands-on experience across the Microsoft security estate. This is a client-facing role for someone who can design a Sentinel and Defender architecture, work alongside a client SOC team on the detail, and present the design credibly to senior client stakeholders.</p><p>The emphasis is on breadth across the Microsoft security platform — threat protection, cloud security, identity and data security — and the ability to design them as one integrated architecture rather than a set of separately deployed products. You will lead the security workstream on client engagements, support pursuits as the security SME, and contribute to the practice’s standards and reusable IP.</p><br /><p><b>Key Responsibilities</b></p><ul><li>Own the security architecture for client engagements — target-state design, Zero Trust design, control mapping and a prioritised security roadmap aligned to the client’s risk profile.</li></ul><ul><li>Design and implement Microsoft Sentinel: workspace and tenant design, ingestion strategy, log tiering and cost optimisation, detection engineering in KQL, and SOAR playbooks.</li></ul><ul><li>Support migrations from legacy SIEM platforms (Splunk, QRadar, ArcSight and similar) to Microsoft Sentinel — content and use-case migration, parallel running and validation.</li></ul><ul><li>Design across Microsoft Defender XDR — Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Identity, Defender for Office 365 and Defender for Cloud Apps — covering deployment architecture, policy design, tuning and incident investigation.</li></ul><ul><li>Design cloud posture and workload security with Defender for Cloud — CSPM and CWPP, secure score improvement and regulatory compliance dashboards.</li></ul><ul><li>Architect identity security on Entra ID: conditional access design, Privileged Identity Management, identity governance, and passwordless and phishing-resistant authentication.</li></ul><ul><li>Design endpoint security through Intune — security baselines, attack surface reduction and compliance policies — integrated with Defender for Endpoint.</li></ul><ul><li>Design Microsoft Purview solutions for data security: information protection and sensitivity labelling, and DLP.</li></ul><ul><li>Run security assessments and maturity reviews — gap analysis against NIST CSF, ISO 27001, CIS and Microsoft Zero Trust maturity, with prioritised remediation roadmaps.</li></ul><ul><li>Contribute to detection strategy and SOC ways of working — use-case catalogues, detection engineering lifecycle and incident response runbooks.</li></ul><ul><li>Advise on securing AI adoption — Copilot readiness and oversharing remediation, and the data security controls that make AI deployment defensible.</li></ul><ul><li>Align security design to regulatory and data protection requirements — India’s DPDP Act, GDPR, and sector guidance such as RBI, SEBI or IRDAI where applicable.</li></ul><ul><li>Support security solutioning on pursuits — workshops, solution architecture, estimation and proposal content.</li></ul><ul><li>Contribute to practice IP — reference architectures, deployment accelerators and detection content — and mentor security consultants and analysts.</li></ul><br /><p><b>Required Skills &amp; Experience</b></p><ul><li>12–14 years in cyber security across architecture, engineering, consulting or security operations, with a substantial recent focus on the Microsoft security platform.</li></ul><ul><li>Hands-on design and implementation experience across Microsoft Sentinel, Defender XDR, Defender for Cloud, Entra ID and Intune, with working knowledge of Purview.</li></ul><ul><li>Strong Microsoft Sentinel depth: ingestion and cost architecture, KQL proficiency, detection engineering and automation with Logic Apps.</li></ul><ul><li>Design and deployment experience across the Defender suite, including policy and exclusion strategy and alert tuning.</li></ul><ul><li>Purview experience across information protection and DLP, including classification and labelling strategy.</li></ul><ul><li>Solid identity security background: Entra ID architecture, conditional access, privileged access and hybrid identity.</li></ul><ul><li>Working knowledge of Azure platform security — network security, Key Vault, encryption, and how platform design affects security posture.</li></ul><ul><li>Practical command of security frameworks and standards: NIST CSF, ISO 27001, CIS Controls, MITRE ATT&amp;CK and Zero Trust reference models.</li></ul><ul><li>Experience leading security assessments and producing prioritised, client-ready roadmaps.</li></ul><ul><li>Incident response and threat landscape awareness — able to reason about attacker behaviour, not only about product configuration.</li></ul><ul><li>Strong client-facing consulting skills, including senior stakeholder engagement and contribution to pre-sales solutioning.</li></ul><ul><li>Clear technical writing — architecture documents, assessment reports and runbooks at client-ready quality.</li></ul>

<p><b>Preferred / Good to Have</b></p><ul><li>Microsoft certifications: SC-100, SC-200, SC-300, SC-400 or AZ-500; industry certifications such as CISSP or CISM.</li></ul><ul><li>Experience with data protection and regulatory requirements applicable to Indian and global clients.</li></ul><ul><li>Automation and IaC for security deployment — PowerShell, Logic Apps, Bicep or Terraform for repeatable security configuration.</li></ul><ul><li>Multi-cloud security exposure (AWS, GCP) and integration of third-party tooling into Sentinel.</li></ul><ul><li>Experience supporting MDR or managed security services.</li></ul><ul><li>Experience in regulated industries — BFSI, healthcare, energy or public sector.</li></ul><ul><li>Experience in a global delivery / SI or Microsoft partner environment with distributed teams.</li></ul><ul><li>Experience mentoring junior security consultants and analysts.</li></ul>