KIPP Texas Public Schools is a network of 59 public charter, open-enrollment, pre-k-12 schools educating nearly 34,000 students across Austin, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. Together with families and communities, our mission is to create joyful, academically excellent schools that prepare students with the skills and confidence to pursue the paths they choose —college, career, and beyond—so they can lead fulfilling lives and build a more just world.

Founded in Houston in 1994, and operating as KIPP Texas since 2018, our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism in our classrooms, in our offices, and in the communities we serve is unwavering. We are looking to hire a diverse team of dynamic, collaborative, and dedicated individuals with an unyielding belief that every child will succeed. Join our Team and Family and champion equity, chase excellence, persist with purpose, bring joy, and help us rise together.

KIPP Texas is part of the national KIPP network of 255 college-preparatory public charter schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Nationwide, KIPP students complete four-year college at a rate of 36 percent, comparable to the national average for all students and approximately three times higher than the average of students from low-income communities.

You can see all our job opportunities at https://kipptexas.org/join-our-team/.

The Opportunity

The O365 Administrator reports to the KTX Director, Infrastructure. The O365 Administrator is responsible for supporting and maintaining KIPP Texas’ Microsoft Office 365 cloud services, the organization’s statewide productivity and collaboration platform, with an emphasis on administering, supporting and securing Exchange Online email. The O365 Administrator is specifically responsible for ensuring the availability and integrity of email messaging, calendaring and contacts management.

Key Responsibilities

Functional Accountabilities

• Provides technical support and administrative maintenance for Microsoft Office 365 cloud services to ensure highly available and optimally performing services.

• Implements and supports Microsoft cloud technologies and services.

• Performs tuning, monitoring, and optimization of Microsoft cloud services.

• Manages 3rd party email distributions and analytics services (i.e. PoliteMail) and Microsoft Outlook add-ins (i.e. Google Meet) to extend the efficiency and effectiveness of the O365 platform.

• Serves as the primary escalation point with respect to O365 cloud services for all Information Technology teams.

•  Monitors and identifies security risks and vulnerabilities to our O365 environment and proposes and recommends mitigation actions.

• Implements and maintains email related security technologies, services and features to prevent unauthorized access, malware delivered as attachments, phishing attempts and account compromises; proposes email related information to security awareness activities.

• Creates, maintains, optimizes and troubleshoots individual and group mailboxes, mailbox rules, address books, dynamic distribution groups (DDGs) and distribution lists (DLs).

• Develops, maintains and secures O365 documentation for Microsoft cloud services and processes.

• Manages Microsoft Office 365 license subscriptions and renewals; allocates and monitors usage to ensure license compliance.

• Creates proposed email related policies for end user email utilization, security and behavior and submits for approval.

• Establishes email related standards and procedures; conducts periodic audits for compliance.

• Assembles standard and ad-hoc reports, performs analysis and formats results to assist efficient and effective legal discovery and decisioning.

• Provides input to identity management solutions for the organization.

• Provides input to business continuity planning, disaster recovery planning, and security standards

• Keeps abreast of best practices and emerging cloud services technology trends and recommends the implementation of services that take advantage of these trends and practices. 

Service Delivery

• Adheres to IT standards, metrics, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), documentation, communications, and training. Provides status updates to management and status updates to users on the status of service requests and incidents.

• Manages email services, system and device configurations, email related user roles and permissions and retention settings.

• Configures and manages Exchange Online backup settings and performs mailbox restorations and item recoveries as necessary. 

• Responds to and handles planned and emergency email service outages. Works with Infrastructure Technologists and Analysts to propose and recommend prevention and mitigation actions.

• Performs extensive mailbox searches to find and remove targeted emails identified as potential cybersecurity risks.

• Evaluates and interprets requirements of key business stakeholders and data consumers to develop recommendations and implement approved solutions.

• Provides progress reporting for assigned projects including estimates, risk analysis, and time spent.

• Independently designs, develops, and delivers ad-hoc reports.

• Utilizes Exchange PowerShell to automate and streamline routine maintenance and support tasks.

• Implements monitoring procedures to maximize availability and performance of cloud services and provides status reports to management.

Skills

• Skilled at technical troubleshooting and problem solving.

• Excellent organizational skills; ability to manage multiple competing priorities and assignments.

• Strong interpersonal skills; ability to work well in a collaborative cross-functional environment.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

• Ability to clearly communicate complex concepts and issues to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Possess high ethical standards; ability to work with and protect highly sensitive and confidential information.

• Highly competent at administering, securing and supporting Microsoft Office 365 tenants and associated cloud services.

• Experience working with Exchange Powershell for scripting and automation

• Experience with email security layers (i.e SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc.).

• Experience migrating entities from Google platforms to Microsoft platforms is a plus.

• Experience with Active Directory (AD) security and group policy is a plus.

• Experience with Identity Management solutions is a plus.

• Experience with Fortinet firewalls is a plus.

• Experience with other cloud services (AWS/Azure) is a plus.

Education/Experience

• Bachelor’s degree (or 5+ years of relevant work experience) in Computer Science, Business Administration or a related field.

• Minimum two years of professional experience in a similar role.

• Microsoft 365 Fundamentals certification is required.

• Alignment with KIPP Texas’ mission and core values.

• Microsoft 365 Security, Compliance and Identity Fundamentals certification is a plus.

• Microsoft 365 Messaging certification is a plus.

• Microsoft 365 Security Administrator certification is a plus.

• CompTIA Cloud+ certification is a plus.

• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) certification is a plus.

• Experience working in a school district, CMO, non-profit or government agency is a plus.

Compensation and Benefits:

As a full time KIPP Texas employee you are eligible to participate in all KIPP Texas’ benefit plans. KIPP Texas offers a robust variety of benefits choices, including medical, dental, and vision options, as well as life insurance, fertility, and disability plans starting as low as $25/month.

KIPP provides equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees.
As an equal opportunity employer, we hire without consideration to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status or disability.