Systems Administrator

Senior D365 Platform, Integration & Security Administrator is responsible for ensuring the secure, stable, and controlled operation of the global Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform and Azure integration services. The role encompasses lifecycle administration of D365 Finance & Operations, D365 Customer Engagement, and Azure Integration Services, including release and environment management, performance monitoring, security role management, and access control. The position also involves implementing automation and artificial intelligence technologies to improve operational efficiency and ensure the reliable operation of enterprise systems.

Key Accountabilities

D365 application lifecycle and environment administration

• Administer the lifecycle of D365 Finance & Operations and D365 Customer Engagement solutions across development, test, accept and production environments.
• Maintain the release calendar; coordinate release readiness, deployment, validation, rollback and post-release review with IT applications leads, business owners, development teams and external partners.
• Operate and improve ALM processes using Azure DevOps, Dynamics 365 Lifecycle Services and Power Platform pipelines, including version control, build and deployment traceability.
• Plan environment refreshes, sandbox usage, platform updates and Microsoft release-wave assessments; maintain environment inventories, dependencies and operational runbooks.
• Ensure that business content is approved by the accountable product or process owner while the technical release process remains controlled by the platform team.

Azure Integration Services lifecycle and operations

• Administer the release lifecycle of integration components supporting D365, including Azure Logic Apps, Service Bus, API Management, Azure Functions, Event Grid, Storage and related integration resources.
• Coordinate integration releases with D365 application releases and maintain automated CI/CD pipelines, environment-specific configuration, deployment approvals and rollback arrangements.
• Monitor failed messages, queues, APIs, workflows, processing latency, throughput, availability and end-to-end transaction flows; establish actionable alerts and operational dashboards.
• Lead or coordinate incident triage, replay/reprocessing, root-cause analysis and problem management for recurring integration failures.
• Maintain interface catalogues, support ownership, dependencies, certificates, secrets, service principals, API versions and technical runbooks.
• Monitor Azure consumption and identify opportunities to improve reliability, supportability and cost efficiency.

Security, roles and access governance

• Design, create, test, document and maintain D365 F&O and D365 CE security roles, duties, privileges, teams and business-unit access models.
• Administer joiner, mover and leaver provisioning; assign and remove access through approved workflows and Microsoft Entra ID groups wherever applicable.
• Support periodic access reviews, audit evidence and remediation of security findings.
• Administer privileged access in line with organisational policy, including eligible and time-bound access through Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management where applicable.
• Manage service accounts, application registrations, certificates, secrets and integration identities in collaboration with Cybersecurity and Azure platform teams.
• Maintain clear ownership and documentation for roles, approvals, exceptions and emergency access.

License provisioning and optimization

• Administer the end-to-end allocation, modification and removal of Dynamics 365, Power Platform and related Microsoft cloud licenses through approved joiner, mover and leaver processes.
• Translate role and business requirements into appropriate license types and service plans, applying least-privilege and minimum-necessary licensing principles.
• Monitor license assignments, utilization, capacity and entitlement consumption; identify inactive, duplicate, over-provisioned or incorrectly assigned licenses and coordinate timely reclamation or reassignment.
• Maintain license inventories, assignment rules, approval records and audit evidence, ensuring alignment with contractual entitlements, organizational policy and Microsoft licensing terms.
• Produce regular license-demand forecasts and optimization recommendations, working with Procurement, Finance, application owners and Microsoft partners to control cost while protecting operational continuity.
• Support true-ups, renewals and license-model changes by validating current usage, anticipated demand, compliance exposure and opportunities to optimize subscription levels.

Monitoring, performance and service health

• Establish proactive monitoring across D365, Dataverse, Azure integrations and supporting services using relevant Microsoft tools such as Azure Monitor, Application Insights, LCS and Power Platform analytics.
• Monitor application performance, batch processing, integrations, APIs, capacity, storage, service limits, errors, user access and Microsoft service-health notifications.
• Define operational KPIs, service thresholds and alerts; analyse trends and coordinate corrective actions before they become business-impacting incidents.
• Coordinate performance testing and baseline comparisons for significant releases, customisations and integrations.
• Own technical escalation of complex platform incidents to Microsoft and external support partners.

Operational automation and applied AI

• Identify repetitive, manual and error-prone activities across platform administration, monitoring, access, license management, release management and support that can be simplified or automated.
• Design, implement and maintain practical automation using appropriate Microsoft technologies, including Power Automate, Azure Automation, scripting, APIs, Azure DevOps pipelines and platform-native capabilities.
• Evaluate and implement responsible AI-assisted solutions where they can improve operational efficiency, such as incident triage, knowledge retrieval, documentation, trend analysis, alert enrichment and support workflows.
• Work with business owners, Cybersecurity, Data and Architecture teams to assess value, risk, data protection, access controls, human oversight and compliance before deploying automation or AI capabilities.
• Test, document, monitor and continuously improve automated and AI-assisted processes, ensuring clear ownership, exception handling, auditability, support arrangements and safe fallback procedures.
• Measure realized benefits through reduced manual effort, faster processing, fewer errors and improved service quality, and share reusable patterns across the platform operations team.

Governance, documentation and continuous improvement

• Maintain platform standards, release procedures, environment strategy, security model, integration runbooks and disaster-recovery or rollback documentation.
• Ensure changes are linked to approved work items and retain evidence of testing, approval, deployment and validation.

• Contribute to audits, risk reviews, licence and capacity optimisation, technical-debt reduction and service improvement plans.

   

Experience and Qualifications

Essential

• At least 5 years of relevant experience administering or operating enterprise Microsoft business applications, including strong practical exposure to D365 F&O and/or D365 CE / Dataverse.
• Demonstrable experience with release management, multi-environment ALM, Azure DevOps pipelines and production deployment controls.
• Hands-on experience in D365 security-role design, access provisioning, least-privilege controls and audit support.
• Operational experience with Azure Integration Services, particularly Logic Apps, Service Bus, API Management and Azure Functions.
• Experience with monitoring, troubleshooting and root-cause analysis across applications and integrations.
• Ability to work with IT applications leads, business owners, technical teams and external suppliers in an international environment.
• Strong written documentation, prioritisation and stakeholder communication skills in English.
• Experience administering and optimizing Dynamics 365, Power Platform or comparable Microsoft cloud licensing, including provisioning controls, utilization analysis, reclamation and audit support.
• Practical skills in process analysis and operational automation using Power Automate, scripting, APIs, Azure Automation, Azure DevOps or comparable tools, with the ability to evaluate and safely apply AI-assisted capabilities.