Microsoft Office 365 Architect

Job Description

M365 Architect

Engagement Details

• Type: Contract, 3 months to start (through year-end), with possible extension into January. The client may also be interested in a contract-to-perm arrangement.
• Location: Richmond, Virginia, 3x/week onsite.

About the Role
The client is undergoing a major enterprise transformation following the merger of multiple business entities under a single commercial brand. Five separate Microsoft 365 tenants inherited through the merger must be consolidated into one unified environment. This is a fast-moving, strategically important initiative, and the organization needs an experienced M365 architect who can lead people and design strategy while staying hands-on with the keyboard.

This is not a purely operational role, nor a purely managerial one — the client already has offshore teams and external partners for routine execution. What's needed is an architect with real management or team-lead experience who can also open a console, build the solution, and prove it works: someone who critically evaluates vendor recommendations, spots flawed approaches, and guides the organization's M365 strategy from both the whiteboard and the keyboard. Key Responsibilities

• Architect and personally help implement a multi-tenant consolidation strategy, unifying five tenants into a single M365 environment
• Lead and mentor team members currently covering M365 responsibilities outside their primary specialty, while remaining hands-on alongside them
• Design and directly configure Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop, SharePoint, email, and collaboration platform environments — not just diagram them
• Assess and personally remediate years of accumulated SharePoint permissions and governance issues, particularly where legacy access could expose sensitive data as AI search tools are introduced
• Advise leadership on governance, security, and data permissioning ahead of enterprise AI capabilities operating over large data sets
• Translate business and transformation goals into practical technical decisions and a build plan
• Evaluate vendor and partner recommendations, identifying risks or gaps in proposed architecture
• Manage day-to-day priorities for the M365 function during a leadership transition, filling a gap left by a recent senior infrastructure departure

Required Experience & Skills

• Proven experience as an architect designing Microsoft 365 solutions at enterprise scale, including Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop, SharePoint, and tenant administration
• Real managerial or team-lead experience — has run a team, owned headcount or delivery decisions, or directly supervised engineers, not just informally guided them
• Still hands-on keyboard — comfortable building, configuring, and troubleshooting personally, not only directing others
• Tenant-to-tenant migration or consolidation experience (multiple tenants merging into one is a strong nice-to-have)
• Strong understanding of M365 governance, security, and permissions management in complex, multi-entity environments
• Familiarity with E5 licensing environments and associated security and compliance tooling
• Awareness of how AI tools such as Copilot interact with enterprise data, and where governance gaps create risk
• Strong communication skills and comfort working directly with senior leadership