Messaging & Collaboration Engineer

American Public Education, Inc. (APEI)•,

About The Position

The Messaging and Collaboration Engineer designs, supports, and improves the platforms employees use to communicate and work together. The role engineers secure, scalable, and reliable services for email, calendaring, chat, meetings, and file collaboration; resolves complex technical issues; and delivers enhancements, integrations, automation, and lifecycle initiatives that improve the employee experience and business value of collaboration services. The engineer administers and supports Microsoft 365, Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business. The position also designs service configurations and technical standards, maintains security and compliance controls, monitors service health, and plans platform changes and migrations. It partners with technical and business teams, documents configurations and processes, communicates issues and changes, and evaluates platform usage and licensing to recommend improvements.

Requirements

Three or more years of experience engineering, administering, or supporting enterprise messaging and collaboration services.
Hands-on experience with Microsoft 365 and Exchange Online in a managed enterprise environment, including mail flow, recipient management, service configuration, and troubleshooting.
Working knowledge of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, email routing, DNS records, authentication, identity, and access management.
Experience designing or implementing collaboration platform enhancements, migrations, integrations, or significant production changes.
Working knowledge of security and compliance concepts such as retention, eDiscovery, auditing, data loss prevention, information protection, external sharing, and privileged access.
Experience troubleshooting complex service issues, performing root cause analysis, and managing changes in a production environment.
Ability to use PowerShell or another scripting language for administration, reporting, and automation.
Ability to translate business and technical requirements into secure, supportable platform designs and implementation plans.
Strong customer service, communication, documentation, prioritization, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to work effectively across technical and business teams.
A bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, or a related field is preferred; an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience is considered.
Relevant Microsoft messaging, collaboration, security, or cloud certification is preferred.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Microsoft Purview, Exchange hybrid environments, Microsoft Entra ID, third-party messaging gateways, email authentication technologies, and collaboration integrations.
Experience with service monitoring, Microsoft 365 usage reporting, adoption analysis, or license optimization.
A bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, or a related field.
Relevant Microsoft messaging, collaboration, security, or cloud certification.

Responsibilities

Engineer, administer, and support enterprise messaging and collaboration platforms, including Microsoft 365, Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.
Design and implement secure, scalable service configurations, technical standards, and platform enhancements aligned with business, security, compliance, and operational requirements.
Troubleshoot complex and escalated issues involving mail flow, calendars, meetings, chat, file sharing, permissions, federation, client connectivity, and service integrations.
Manage and improve configurations for users, groups, mailboxes, distribution lists, shared mailboxes, retention settings, external collaboration, and related platform capabilities.
Engineer and maintain security and compliance controls, including access policies, retention, auditing, message protection, information protection, and eDiscovery, in partnership with Security and Legal or Compliance teams.
Monitor service health, capacity, performance, and availability; lead technical investigation of incidents and recurring problems; and implement corrective and preventive improvements.
Plan and execute platform updates, migrations, integrations, tenant changes, pilots, and adoption initiatives with appropriate testing, change control, communication, and rollback planning.
Develop reusable PowerShell automation and reporting to improve administrative accuracy, consistency, visibility, and efficiency.
Create and maintain architecture diagrams, technical standards, operating procedures, configuration documentation, knowledge articles, and support guidance.
Partner with identity, security, network, endpoint, service desk, application, and vendor teams to deliver reliable services and cross-functional projects.
Provide clear technical guidance and communicate service issues, risks, changes, and resolutions to employees, technical teams, and stakeholders.
Evaluate platform capabilities, usage and adoption trends, support data, and licensing considerations to recommend improvements that increase collaboration effectiveness and return on investment.