Microsoft 365 Engineer

Duration: 6 Months

Rate: £600 - £645 per day

Location: Manchester & remote (hybrid)

Start: ASAP

IR35 Status: Inside

We require a M365 Engineer for our higher education client to support and maintain their enterprise M365 platform during a period of significant transformation across their digital workplace.

You will be part of their IT Services team and provide BAU and 2nd/3rd line support across their core M365 services, whilst also contributing to key strategic initiatives which include the roll out of M365 Copilot, the transition from Zoom to MS Teams and the ongoing governance and support of the Power Platform.

You will play a critical role in maintaining platform stability, supporting users and internal teams, and ensuring successful delivery of platform changes and improvements. You will work closely with their various teams, and project stakeholders to ensure continuity of service and successful delivery of roadmap initiatives.

This is a hands-on operational and engineering role within a large, complex Microsoft 365 environment.

Essential Skills/Experience required:

We require a M365 Engineer who possesses strong hands-on M365 engineering and operational support experience in enterprise scale environments.

• Strong hands-on experience supporting and administering core Microsoft 365 services, including:
  • Microsoft Teams
  • SharePoint Online
  • OneDrive for Business
  • Exchange Online
• Strong troubleshooting and 2nd/3rd line support experience across Microsoft 365 services
• Experience supporting collaboration platform migrations (e.g., Zoom to Teams, tenant migrations, or similar)
• Experience administering and supporting Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate), including governance and environment management
• Experience configuring and maintaining Microsoft 365 tenant settings
• Experience working in operational support roles alongside project delivery
• Strong documentation and knowledge transfer capabilities

Highly desirable:

• Experience supporting or enabling Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Experience working in Higher Education, Public Sector, or similarly complex organisations
• Experience with Entra ID (Azure AD), identity and access management, and integration with Microsoft 365
• Understanding of Microsoft 365 security and compliance capabilities
• Experience supporting Teams telephony, meetings, and collaboration optimisation
• Relevant Microsoft certifications (e.g., MS-700, MS-100/101, or equivalent)

You will demonstrate deep technical experience supporting and administering Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Exchange Online in a live enterprise environment.

Have proven experience supporting Microsoft 365 platform changes, migrations, or transformation initiatives - have experience contributing to projects such as Teams migrations, platform rollouts, tenant configuration, or similar Microsoft 365 transformation activities.

Also to possess strong troubleshooting and stakeholder engagement skills

If this role is of interest then please email your CV to: joanne.stanley@certes.co.uk

Microsoft Purview Specialist 

Duration: 3 Months

Location: Manchester & remote (hybrid)

Rate: £532 per day

Start: ASAP

IR35 Status: Inside

We require a Microsoft Purview Specialist for our higher education client who are delivering a strategic programme to enable Microsoft 365 Copilot across their students and staff.   As part of this initiative, they are establishing enterprise-grade data governance, security, and compliance controls using Microsoft Purview.

An experienced Microsoft Purview Specialist is required to lead the design, implementation, and operationalisation of Purview across Microsoft 365. You will work closely with various areas of the organisation to ensure data is appropriately classified, protected, and governed to support safe adoption of Copilot and broader Microsoft 365 services.

This is a hands-on specialist role responsible for configuring Purview capabilities such as Information Protection, Data Loss Prevention, eDiscovery, retention policies, and audit controls. The successful candidate will also establish governance frameworks, define best practices, and up-skill internal teams to support ongoing operations.

The role sits within their Digital Workplace function and reports to the Digital Workplace Manager. As the Microsoft Purview Specialist you will play a key role in establishing foundational capability and enabling long-term operational ownership within internal teams.

Essential Skills & Experience required:

To possess strong hands-on Microsoft Purview implementation experience within complex enterprise or public sector environments.

Essential:

• Proven hands-on experience implementing and configuring Microsoft Purview in a production environment
• Strong experience across key Purview capabilities, including:
  • Microsoft Information Protection (sensitivity labels, encryption, auto-labelling)
  • Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
  • Retention and records management policies
  • eDiscovery (Standard and Premium)
  • Audit and compliance capabilities
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft 365 security and compliance architecture
• Experience designing and implementing data governance frameworks and controls
• Experience working in environments with regulatory requirements such as GDPR or UK data protection legislation
• Ability to work independently to establish new capability and provide technical leadership
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, including working with security, legal, compliance, and IT teams
• Experience producing documentation, standards, and operational handover material

Highly desirable:

• Experience supporting Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness or governance
• Experience in Higher Education, Public Sector, Government, or similarly complex organisations
• Experience implementing Purview at scale across large tenant environments
• Experience with Insider Risk Management and advanced Purview capabilities
• Microsoft security and compliance certifications (e.g., SC-400, SC-300, SC-100)

Candidates must possesses experience of the following:

 Proven hands-on Microsoft Purview implementation experience
Demonstrable experience implementing and configuring Purview capabilities such as sensitivity labels, DLP, retention policies, and eDiscovery in a live enterprise environment.

Strong Microsoft 365 security, compliance, and data governance experience
Able to demonstrate experience designing and implementing data governance, information protection, and compliance controls across Microsoft 365, ideally in regulated environments

Experience working in complex, regulated organisations with strong stakeholder engagement
To possess previous experience working in large enterprise, public sector, higher education, or similarly complex environments and can engage effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

If this role is of interest then please email your CV to: joanne.stanley@certes.co.uk

Skills and Experience required:

Possess previous experience as a Senior User Experience Designer within a government/public sector environment

As the Senior User Experience Designer you will speak on behalf of the technical teams and facilitate relationships with indirect stakeholders

Have an understanding of governance and how it works and what governance is required

Able to apply strategy using patterns, standards, policies and roadmaps and vision statements

Able to translate organisational goals into usable, accessible and inclusive design solutions. Proficient in designing services and interactions with managed levels of risk and complexity, using well understood patterns and standards appropriately.

Be able to understand trends and practices outside the team and can consider the patterns and interactions on a larger scale.

If this role is of interest, please email your CV to joanne.stanley@certes.co.uk

Server Compliance & Automation Specialist 

Duration: Two Months

Location: Buckinghamshire & remote (hybrid)

Rate: £400 per day (negotiable)

Start: ASAP

IR35 Status: Inside

Role Overview:

We require an experienced Server Compliance & Automation Specialist for a key project which will be focusing on shifting the client's server estate from manual, reactive maintenance to a proactive, automated compliance model.

This project is to harden the clients server estate with the primary objective to bring the current infrastructure into full compliance with security standards.

You will be responsible for the end to end integration of Azure Arc to deploy security agents (MDE); decommission legacy software (Sophos) and implement a sustainable, fully automated patching framework that ensures all servers are visible to the managed SOC.

 You will be responsible for the decommissioning of legacy security software, the rapid deployment of modern endpoint protection, and ensuring all assets are correctly represented in our vulnerability and asset management systems.

Essential Skills & Experience required:

A minimum of 5 years Server Administration experience; ideally within a higher education or large public sector environment.

Able to work autonomously and hit the ground running with good attention to detail in updating their asset records in SNOW.

Have the ability to coordinate with department application owners to schedule brief maintenance windows for security agent swaps.

Possess expert knowledge of Azure Update Manager and Maintenance Configurations

Hands-on experience with Azure Arc (extension management and policy-based onboarding)

MDE deployment, Sophos decommissioning and managed SOC logging requirements

Proficient in MS Intune for server-side security policy enforcement

Proficient in troubleshooting Tenable/Nessus and SNOW Inventory agents

Advanced PowerShell (for Windows) and Bash (for Linux) for automating agent rollouts

Advanced administration experience of Windows Server 2012 R2 through to 2022 and Linux (RHEL/Ubuntu)

Responsibilities include:

1. Automated Patch Management Framework

• Azure Update Manager Setup: Design and implement automated patching schedules using Azure Update Manager for all Arc-enabled servers.
• Maintenance Configurations: Create and assign "Maintenance Configurations" based on server roles (e.g., Dev/Test vs. Production) and University-specific maintenance windows.
• Orchestration & Logic: Configure "Periodic Assessments" (24-hour scans) and automated "Reboot Cycles" to ensure security updates are applied without manual intervention.
• Remediation Workflows: Develop a process to automatically identify and retry failed patches, reducing the manual "re-work" for the permanent infrastructure team.

2. Azure Arc & Security Migration

• Arc Onboarding: Scale the enrolment of on-premises Windows and Linux servers into Azure Arc. Creation of MDE security policies.
• MDE & SOC Integration: Deploy the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) via Azure Arc for Servers, staff and student shared devices.
• Ensure telemetry is correctly onboarded to the Managed SOC for immediate threat detection.
• Microsoft Defender for API’s: Protection for the clients API’s, deployment of Microsoft Defender for Cloud
• Sophos Removal: Systematically uninstall legacy Sophos agents once MDE health is verified, ensuring zero "dual-agent" performance impact.

3. Agent Health & Audit Compliance

• Intune MDM Implementation: Provide assessment and review of current Intune MDM implementation ensure it has been configured correctly

• Intune for End points and Mobile Devices: Enrol all Staff, Students and Mobile Devices into Microsoft Intune (Security Management) to enforce baseline security policies (GPO parity) and management
• SNOW Deployment: Ensure the SNOW Inventory agent is installed and reporting correctly on all servers to maintain an accurate hardware/software asset register.
• Tenable Management: Verify the health of Tenable/Nessus agents. You will be responsible for troubleshooting "non-reporting" assets to ensure 100% scan coverage for vulnerability management.
• Tenable/SNOW Maintenance: Identify and fix broken or non-reporting Tenable and SNOW agents. The goal is 100% visibility in both the vulnerability scanner and the software asset register.

Server upgrades 

• Upgrades to Server O/S ensuring they are compliant with Cyber essentials and running the latest supported versions 

If this role is of interest then please email your CV to: joanne.stanley@certes.co.uk