Solution Architect (DFS)

Job Summary

Job Summary

The Senior Specialist - Unified Messaging & Collaboration (UMC) Services is an E5-level technical expert responsible for end-to-end ownership, engineering, administration, operations, optimization, governance, and strategic evolution of enterprise Messaging, Collaboration, Directory Services, Email Relay Infrastructure, and associated Application Operations platforms. This role serves as a senior individual contributor and technical leader accountable for ensuring highly available, secure, scalable, and resilient collaboration ecosystems supporting global business operations.

The position requires deep expertise across enterprise messaging architectures, collaboration technologies, identity and directory services, UNIX/Linux-based mail relay environments, and operational support functions. The incumbent will drive platform modernization initiatives, operational excellence programs, automation strategies, reliability engineering practices, security compliance, and service governance standards. The role partners closely with cybersecurity, infrastructure, application, cloud, architecture, and business stakeholders to deliver stable and future-ready platforms.

As the highest-level technical specialist within the UMC domain, the individual is expected to provide architectural guidance, lead complex problem resolution, govern enterprise standards, mentor technical teams, manage strategic technology roadmaps, and continuously improve service quality, availability, and user experience through automation, analytics, and proactive engineering practices.

Key Responsibilities

1. Own end-to-end lifecycle management of enterprise Unified Messaging & Collaboration platforms, ensuring availability, security, scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency.
2. Lead administration, engineering, support, and optimization of enterprise messaging infrastructure, including email transport, mailbox services, SMTP routing, and message hygiene solutions.
3. Design, maintain, and optimize enterprise mail flow architecture, including inbound/outbound routing, SMTP connectors, relay configurations, gateway integrations, and secure message transit.
4. Manage UNIX/Linux-based email relay environments utilizing Postfix, Sendmail, Exim, or equivalent technologies across distributed enterprise infrastructures.
5. Drive continuous improvement of messaging security controls, including anti-spam, anti-malware, anti-phishing, email authentication, and threat protection mechanisms.
6. Provide expert-level troubleshooting for complex mail delivery issues, transport failures, routing anomalies, latency concerns, bounce management, and interoperability challenges.
7. Administer and optimize enterprise collaboration platforms supporting messaging, content sharing, communication, productivity, and team collaboration capabilities.
8. Manage Directory Services infrastructure, including authentication, authorization, identity lifecycle management, group management, federation, and access governance.
9. Ensure seamless integration between messaging, collaboration, directory, security, cloud, and business application ecosystems.
10. Establish monitoring frameworks, health analytics, service dashboards, alerting mechanisms, and proactive operational controls to improve service reliability.
11. Lead major incident management activities for critical system outages, providing rapid restoration, communication management, impact mitigation, and service recovery coordination.
12. Conduct detailed Root Cause Analysis (RCA) investigations and implement preventive actions that eliminate recurring incidents and improve operational resilience.
13. Govern Change, Release, and Problem Management processes to ensure minimal business disruption and high deployment success rates.
14. Design and implement automation solutions using scripting and infrastructure management tools to reduce manual effort, improve accuracy, and accelerate service delivery.
15. Drive platform modernization initiatives, migration programs, infrastructure refresh activities, and technology transformation roadmaps.
16. Develop capacity planning models, perform trend analysis, and forecast future infrastructure requirements based on business growth and consumption patterns.
17. Define and maintain High Availability (HA), Disaster Recovery (DR), backup, recovery, and business continuity strategies for all UMC services.
18. Establish technical governance standards, operational procedures, configuration baselines, and service management best practices across all UMC towers.
19. Ensure compliance with enterprise security policies, regulatory requirements, audit controls, and risk management frameworks.
20. Perform infrastructure and application operational support activities, ensuring service dependencies are properly maintained and optimized.
21. Collaborate with enterprise architects to evaluate emerging technologies and develop future-state collaboration and messaging architectures.
22. Manage relationships with technology vendors, support providers, cloud service partners, and product engineering organizations.
23. Define service improvement initiatives using operational metrics, SLA trends, incident analytics, customer feedback, and technology performance indicators.
24. Provide technical leadership, knowledge sharing, mentoring, and capability development for L2/L3 engineers and platform administrators.
25. Act as the final escalation point and trusted technical advisor for critical messaging, collaboration, directory, and mail relay platform issues affecting enterprise operations.

Skill Requirements

Messaging Services Microsoft Exchange Online / Exchange Hybrid Microsoft 365 Messaging Services SMTP Architecture and Mail Flow Design Email Routing and Transport Management Email Security and Hygiene Platforms SPF, DKIM, DMARC Implementation SMTP Relay Infrastructure Message Tracking and Troubleshooting Secure Email Gateway Solutions Mail Archiving and Compliance Solutions Collaboration Services Microsoft 365 Collaboration Technologies Microsoft Teams Administration SharePoint Online Administration OneDrive for Business Enterprise Collaboration Architecture Teams Voice and Collaboration Integrations Collaboration Governance and Compliance Directory Services Active Directory Azure Active Directory / Microsoft Entra ID LDAP Federated Identity Services SSO, MFA and Conditional Access RBAC and Access Governance Identity Lifecycle Management Authentication and Authorization Frameworks Email Relay Systems Postfix Sendmail Exim Linux-based SMTP Relays Mail Gateway Administration DNS, MX Records and Email Transport Services Application Operations Application Monitoring Service Availability Management Middleware Integration Incident and Problem Analysis Performance Management Operational Readiness Validation Automation & Engineering PowerShell Python Shell Scripting (Bash/Korn) Ansible REST APIs Infrastructure Automation Configuration Management Monitoring & Operations Splunk Dynatrace SolarWinds SCOM Grafana Enterprise Monitoring Solutions Platform Engineering High Availability Design Disaster Recovery Planning Capacity Management Performance Tuning Service Reliability Engineering (SRE) Cloud and Hybrid Infrastructure 5. Functional Competencies Unified Messaging & Collaboration Platform Management Enterprise Infrastructure Operations Service Reliability Engineering Technology Lifecycle Management IT Service Management (ITSM) Operational Risk Management Change and Release Governance Security and Compliance Management Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Vendor and Contract Management Technical Documentation and Standards Development Service Improvement and Process Optimization Data-Driven Decision Making Enterprise Architecture Alignment Platform Modernization and Transformation 6. Leadership & Behavioral Competencies Strategic Technical Leadership Influencing Without Authority Executive-Level Communication Stakeholder Management Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Customer-Centric Service Ownership Decision-Making Under Pressure Operational Excellence Mindset Continuous Improvement Orientation Mentoring and Technical Coaching Collaboration Across Global Teams Accountability and Ownership Innovation and Automation Focus Conflict Resolution and Negotiation Results and Outcomes Orientation 7. Experience Requirements 10-15+ years of overall IT Infrastructure and Enterprise Platform experience. Minimum 8+ years in Messaging, Collaboration, Directory Services, or related infrastructure domains. Minimum 5+ years supporting enterprise-scale messaging and collaboration ecosystems serving large global organizations. Proven experience managing multiple infrastructure towers simultaneously, including Messaging, Collaboration, Directory Services, and Email Relay platforms. Demonstrated expertise leading major incident recovery, RCA execution, platform modernization, and operational transformation programs. Experience working in hybrid cloud and large-scale distributed enterprise environments. Strong track record of automation implementation, service optimization, and operational governance. Experience working with global stakeholders, vendors, audit teams, and cross-functional technology organizations. 8. Educational Qualifications Required Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Electronics, Telecommunications, Engineering, or related discipline. Preferred Master's Degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, Technology Management, or equivalent. 9. Preferred Certification

Other Requirements