Senior Email Engineer

Position Purpose

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state, and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem‑solving skills, and dedication to building stronger minds and a healthier world. UW is committed to attracting and retaining a diverse staff, honoring the experiences, perspectives, and unique identities of all employees.

Together, our community strives to create and maintain inclusive, equitable, and welcoming working and learning environments.

UW Information Technology (UW‑IT) is the central IT organization for the University of Washington, responsible for strategic planning, oversight, and direction of the UW’s IT infrastructure, resources, and services. It provides critical technology support and shared services to all three campuses, UW medical centers, and research operations worldwide. The Infrastructure division delivers the technology infrastructure that sustains UW as a leading research, teaching, learning, and academic medical institution.

The Senior Email Engineer will support the Email Infrastructure service, leading architecture, administration, and operational integrity of enterprise‑scale email systems that process over 5 million messages daily for more than 700 000 email identities.

The role involves end‑to‑end management of Proofpoint security solutions and core centralized mail transport systems. It requires advanced proficiency in managing and customizing MTAs, specifically Sendmail (with m4 macro language) and Postfix, to design, optimize, and troubleshoot complex mail flows in a high‑availability environment.

Supports critical services and infrastructure integral to administrative, research, and teaching functions. The work affects the quality of IT platform services for the University and its extended community, supporting 80 incoming email domains and over 700 000 email addresses.

• Email Infrastructure Engineering and Sustainment (60%)
• Implement and sustain enterprise‑grade email systems leveraging Sendmail and Postfix to ensure high availability, performance, and reliability.
• Provide advanced administration and support for Proofpoint security tools (POD, EFD, TRAP/CLEAR, DLP, PSAT, SER).
• Continuously monitor Proofpoint and mail queues to proactively detect, diagnose, and remediate delivery anomalies.
• Serve as a subject matter expert for Tier 3 escalation and engineering‑level support requests.
• Lead incident response for email‑based threats (spam, phishing, malware).
• Demonstrate in‑depth knowledge of SMTP, DMARC, DKIM, SPF.
• Analyze system logs for error diagnosis and message tracing.
• Design, develop, and maintain automation scripts and tools for monitoring and performance tracking.
• Consult with stakeholders to design and implement tailored infrastructure solutions.
• Operational Excellence and System Maintenance (20%)
• Maintain and monitor services in alignment with SLAs.
• Generate utilization metrics and performance reports.
• Participate in on‑call rotation.
• Lead incident management and service restoration.
• Investigate and resolve complex infrastructure issues.
• Maintain knowledge base of known issues.
• Support disaster recovery strategy and contingency plans.
• Drive continuous improvement of documentation and runbooks.
• Technical Consulting and Stakeholder Engagement (10%)
• Provide expert technical consultation on integration and optimization.
• Ensure solution architecture aligns with UW‑IT standards.
• Represent email services in meetings and forums.
• Participate in industry groups and professional communities.
• Administrative and Professional Development Activities (10%)
• Fulfill administrative responsibilities (project documentation, status reporting).
• Contribute to team and organizational improvement.
• Engage in ongoing professional development.
• Represent UW at external conferences.
• Perform additional duties as assigned.

Serve as technical and strategic point of contact for the team, providing guidance, mentorship, and oversight on complex projects. Lead design, implementation, and…