Microsoft 365 Architect

This role owns and operates the Creighton Microsoft 365 environment as a secure, reliable, and well governed enterprise platform. This role is accountable for platform health, identity security, and service maturity, while working in close coordination with infrastructure, security, and end user engineering teams.

Essential Functions:

• Platform Ownership 

  • This role defines and maintains a forward looking platform roadmap that aligns the tenant with Microsoft best practices, emerging capabilities, and long term institutional success.

  • Consolidating all information into a high-level roadmap that prioritizes essential requirements over nice-to-have requests, while documenting both.

  • Proactively evaluating Microsoft’s roadmap and ensuring the environment is positioned to adopt new capabilities in a controlled and value driven manner, rather than reacting to change after the fact.

  • Continuously assess and align tenant configuration with Microsoft recommended architecture, security baselines, and service evolution

  • Monitor emerging Microsoft capabilities, including AI driven services such as Microsoft Copilot, and define governance, access controls, and appropriate use within the tenant

• Operational Management

  • Accountable for the day to day operational integrity, stability, and performance of the Microsoft 365 platform. This includes establishing a disciplined operating model that ensures the environment is consistently maintained, monitored, and improved in alignment with Microsoft service changes and institutional needs.

  • Define and execute a structured operational cadence covering daily, weekly, and monthly platform activities such as service health review, identity monitoring, license management, and configuration validation

  • Continuously monitor Microsoft 365 service health, message center updates, and roadmap changes, translating them into actionable operational tasks and configuration updates

  • Oversee change management for the platform, ensuring updates and configuration changes are tested, documented, and implemented in a controlled manner

• Engineering and Integration

  • Lead the planning, deployment, and configuration of M365, ensuring secure and seamless integration with on-premises Active Directory and third-party systems.

  • Document all integrations through detailed network diagrams and system documentation specific to Creighton’s network.

  • Collaborate with security, networking, and application teams to enforce identity governance, role-based access controls (RBAC), and lifecycle management across EntraID. 

• Support 

  • Provide Tier 3 technical support and troubleshooting for Microsoft 365 services including but not limited to; Teams, Defender related O365 products and issues –these escalations from the service desk  should be reviewed and resolved within a reasonable time period. 

• Governance 

  • Serve as a key leader in shaping the strategic direction, security posture, and governance of the Microsoft 365 platform. This role actively contributes to and helps drive Microsoft 365 steering committee discussions, providing informed guidance on priorities, risk, and platform evolution.

  • The position is expected to influence decision making by bringing forward insights on emerging Microsoft capabilities, security considerations, and operational impacts, ensuring that governance decisions are forward looking, well informed, and aligned with long term institutional success.

  • Responsible for staying current of all things Microsoft 365 that have direct impact to Creighton financial and user base, including changes & updates, roadmap & releases, and third-party solutions, to ensure the University is aware of significant impacts to our products and their expenses. This is to be done through self study and formal education, to be initiated by the employee.

Qualifications:

•    Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, related discipline, or equivalent experience.
•    Minimum of eight years of experience in deploying and configuring Microsoft 365 in business setting.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

Experience with:
•    Deep understanding of Microsoft 365 architecture, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, and Microsoft Entra ID 
•    Advanced knowledge of identity and access management, including authentication methods, conditional access, identity protection, and privileged access strategies 
•    Working knowledge of Azure services that underpin Microsoft 365, including identity integration, networking considerations, and cloud architecture fundamentals 
•    Familiarity with Microsoft roadmap, release cycles, and service evolution, with the ability to translate changes into actionable platform updates 
•    Knowledge of AI capabilities within Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Copilot, and the associated governance, data exposure risks, and control frameworks

Licenses/Certifications:

The Microsoft 365 Architect is required to possess and maintain advanced, current certifications that demonstrate deep expertise in enterprise platform ownership, identity, and security. This role requires a multi certification profile across Microsoft 365, security, and Azure.

• Microsoft 365 Certified: Enterprise Administrator Expert 
• Microsoft Certified: Identity and Access Administrator Associate
• Microsoft Certified: Security Operations Analyst Associate