Senior AI Platform Architect - M365 Copilot & Governance

Northwestern University; Evanston (IL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Paid vacation

Tuition benefits

Retirement plans

Flexible work

Job summary

Northwestern University is seeking a senior IT architect to shape strategy, architecture, and governance for AI services across the campus collaboration suite, with a primary focus on Microsoft 365 Copilot and related AI capabilities. You will drive security, privacy, and compliance, and define standards for adoption across the M365 tenant.

In this role, you will lead architectural decisions, governance models, and rollout plans, partnering with Information Security, IT leadership, and

Qualifications

• Seven or more years of enterprise IT experience delivering solutions within Microsoft 365 environments.
• Hands-on responsibility for architecture, design, governance, or engineering in at least two of: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, Entra ID, Purview.
• Strong working knowledge of Entra ID, identity and access management, Microsoft Graph permission models, and M365 security and compliance tooling.
• Experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot and emerging AI capabilities in M365, including design or governance of AI solutions within institutional workflows.
• Demonstrated experience implementing security controls, privacy safeguards, or compliance frameworks in a cloud environment.
• Experience implementing governance for enterprise platform integrations, including apps, connectors, and third‑party services.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain a multi-year strategy and roadmap for adopting Microsoft 365 Copilot and related AI capabilities across the institution.
• Lead tenant-wide architectural decisions for integrating Copilot and AI capabilities across M365 services.
• Define architectural guardrails for AI-enabled services within the M365 tenant, including identity, permissions, and vendor governance.
• Develop standards, runbooks, and support procedures for monitoring service health and incident response for AI configurations.
• Collaborate with Information Security Office, compliance, and data owners to align AI capabilities with academic and research needs.

Skills

Enterprise IT experience

M365 architecture

Governance

Exchange Online

SharePoint Online

OneDrive

Teams

Entra ID

Purview

Job description

Northwestern University is seeking a senior IT architect to shape strategy, architecture, and governance for AI services across the campus collaboration suite, with a primary focus on Microsoft 365 Copilot and related AI capabilities. You will drive security, privacy, and compliance, and define standards for adoption across the M365 tenant.

In this role, you will lead architectural decisions, governance models, and rollout plans, partnering with Information Security, IT leadership, and