Senior Staff Engineer, Productivity

GEICO • Bethesda, MD

7d • $130,000 - $260,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

GEICO is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to set technical direction and deliver secure, resilient Microsoft 365 and AI capabilities. The role provides technical leadership across teams and initiatives, translating complex business needs into secure, maintainable, measurable solutions and leading architecture and engineering decisions for cross-functional capabilities and integrations.

The Senior Staff Engineer is a self-directed technical leader who shapes strategy and executes technical roadmaps across teams. As a hands-on contributor and approver, this engineer establishes standards for architecture, engineering patterns, code, automation, configuration, security, reliability, and operational readiness. The role also mentors engineers and administrators and creates reusable guidance and tooling.

The position leads enterprise Microsoft 365 platform engineering and administration across services including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Graph. It also sets technical strategy and governance for Microsoft 365 Copilot and related AI capabilities, including secure design, evaluation, monitoring, responsible AI controls, and adoption recommendations. The role collaborates with security, privacy, legal, records, identity, network, endpoint, and application teams, and communicates technical options and recommendations to technical, business, and executive audiences.

The position is hybrid, with three days onsite. GEICO does not sponsor new applicants for employment authorization for this position.

Requirements

• At least 10 years of professional engineering, platform, infrastructure, or software development experience, including significant architecture and design responsibility.
• Extensive experience engineering and operating complex enterprise platforms across architecture, automation, integration, testing, deployment, observability, reliability, and production support.
• Strong proficiency in PowerShell, .NET, C#, and at least one of Python, Java, Go, or JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Experience with Microsoft Graph APIs, Git, pull requests, CI/CD, and infrastructure or configuration as code.
• Advanced administration and engineering experience across Microsoft 365, with deep expertise in several core workloads and tenant governance.
• Hands-on Microsoft Copilot experience and working knowledge of generative AI, agents, retrieval-augmented generation, prompt/context design, evaluation, responsible AI, security, and data governance.
• Strong understanding of Azure, modern identity, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, certificates, secrets, APIs, networking, and zero-trust principles.
• Demonstrated success influencing across teams, leading architecture decisions, mentoring engineers, and communicating with technical and executive audiences.
• Demonstrated enterprise experience leading complex, cross-functional technical initiatives and delivering production services.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

• Experience designing or governing Microsoft 365 Copilot, personal productivity agents, Microsoft Graph connectors, plugins, or enterprise knowledge grounding.
• Experience with Azure AI Foundry or Azure AI services, model evaluation, content safety, responsible AI reviews, and AI observability.
• Experience operating Microsoft 365 in a large, highly regulated enterprise.
• Experience with GitHub, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, automated testing, and configuration validation.
• Relevant certifications such as Microsoft 365 Administrator Expert, Cybersecurity Architect Expert, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Power Platform Solution Architect Expert, or Azure AI Engineer Associate.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture, design, engineering, implementation, and continuous improvement of enterprise Microsoft 365 and AI platform capabilities.
• Remain hands-on with software engineering, PowerShell, general-purpose programming, APIs, infrastructure and configuration as code, testing, telemetry, troubleshooting, and root-cause analysis.
• Translate complex business requirements into technical designs, architecture decisions, delivery plans, reusable patterns, and nonfunctional requirements.
• Establish standards for secure design, maintainability, reliability, performance, testability, observability, deployment, and operational ownership.
• Lead reviews for architecture, code, automation, configurations, integrations, production readiness, and significant platform changes.
• Create reusable components, reference architectures, and automation that improve delivery speed and consistency.
• Drive service maturity through telemetry, capacity planning, problem management, post-incident analysis, and corrective engineering.
• Provide technical leadership for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Graph, and related Microsoft 365 services.
• Design and govern tenant configurations, identity integrations, lifecycle controls, security and compliance settings, information protection, retention, external collaboration, and administrative practices.
• Engineer solutions using Microsoft Graph, PowerShell, APIs, automation platforms, source control, CI/CD, and approved DevOps tooling.
• Partner with security, privacy, legal, records, identity, network, endpoint, and application teams to deliver compliant end-to-end solutions.
• Evaluate Microsoft roadmap changes, service-health signals, adoption opportunities, technical debt, and platform risks, and turn findings into prioritized roadmaps.
• Define observability for service health, configuration drift, errors, latency, capacity, adoption, and operational performance.
• Lead technical strategy, engineering, and governance for M365 Copilot, Microsoft Copilot Chat, agents, connectors, plugins, and related AI capabilities.
• Design secure patterns for grounding, retrieval, agent actions, identity, permissions, data boundaries, content lifecycle, auditability, monitoring, and human oversight.
• Apply responsible AI controls and model or agent performance testing.
• Define evaluation criteria for accuracy, relevance, safety, security, reliability, user experience, and business value before broad deployment.
• Identify and mitigate oversharing, permission gaps, ungrounded responses, unsafe actions, sensitive-data exposure, weak evaluation, and uncontrolled cost or usage.
• Test emerging capabilities and provide evidence-based adoption recommendations, limitations, and required controls.
• Develop and execute technical roadmaps aligned to business priorities, platform strategy, architecture standards, risk posture, and measurable outcomes.
• Influence leaders through clear options, trade-offs, data, and recommendations.
• Lead vendor and technology evaluations covering architecture fit, security, operability, supportability, and total cost.
• Mentor Staff, Senior, and developing engineers and strengthen technical communities of practice.
• Communicate complex technical topics clearly to technical teams, business partners, executives, and control functions.

Benefits

• Personalized development programs, mentorship, and certification assistance.
• Competitive pay, benefits, and flexibility to support well-being and the future.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior