Senior Email Engineer

Job Description

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 build stronger minds and a healthier world. UW is committed to attracting and retaining a diverse staff, your experiences, perspectives, and unique identities will be honored at the University of Washington.

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

UW Information Technology (UW-IT) is the central information technology organization for the University of Washington, responsible for strategic planning, oversight, and direction of the UW's IT infrastructure, resources, and services. UW-IT provides critical technology support and centralized or shared services to all three campuses, UW medical centers, and research operations around the world. UW-IT partners with the UW community to enable innovation, learning, discovery, and service.

The Infrastructure division provides system design, architecture, administration, software engineering, and operational support for academic systems, administrative systems, and research computing.

The Infrastructure division of UW-IT delivers the technology infrastructure required to sustain UW as a leading research, teaching, learning, and academic medical institution. These technologies support the UW's core mission at all levels - research, teaching, learning, healthcare, and the necessary underlying administrative and operational functions required to deliver these services.

The Senior Email Engineer will support the Email Infrastructure service at the University of Washington. This position requires a team-oriented IT professional, experienced in implementing, managing, and supporting email systems and infrastructure at scale.

Position Complexities:

The Senior Email Engineer plays a critical role within the Email Infrastructure Services team, responsible for the architecture, administration, and operational integrity of enterprise-scale email systems at the University of Washington. This includes the end-to-end management of Proofpoint security solutions and core centralized mail transport systems that collectively process over 5 million messages daily and support a distributed user base exceeding 700,000 email identities.

These systems form the backbone of the University's email communication and cybersecurity posture, providing essential services such as message routing, threat detection, policy enforcement, and delivery assurance.

This role demands advanced proficiency in managing and customizing mail transfer agents (MTAs), specifically through deep expertise in Sendmail-including the m4 macro processing language-and Postfix, enabling the engineer to design, optimize, and troubleshoot complex mail flows across a dynamic and high-availability environment.

Position Dimensions and Impact to the University:

This position supports critical services and infrastructure integral to the operation of administrative, research, and teaching functions of the University. The quality of the work performed by this position has an effect on the quality of the IT platform services provided to the University and its extended community.

These services support 80 incoming email domains and over 700K email addresses, enabling faculty, staff, and students to carry out the mission of the University.

POSITION RESPONSIBILITIES

Email Infrastructure Engineering and Sustainment (60%)

● Implement, and sustain enterprise-grade email systems leveraging open-source platforms such as Sendmail and Postfix to ensure high availability, performance, and reliability.

● Provide advanced administration and support for Proofpoint security tools, including POD, EFD, TRAP/CLEAR, DLP, PSAT, and SER, ensuring robust email protection and compliance.

● Continuously monitor Proofpoint and related mail system queues to proactively detect, diagnose, and remediate email delivery anomalies.

● Serve as a subject matter expert for Tier 3 escalation and engineering-level support requests,…