Director, Global Modern Workplace

Job Description:

The Director of Modern Workplace is a strategic technology leader responsible for designing, delivering, and leading the complete modern workplace ecosystem. This role directs cross-functional engineering teams, working in a matrix reporting environment, to build secure, productive, and seamless work experiences across global endpoints, collaboration platforms, identity systems, and applications.

The Director owns the architectural vision, strategic direction, and user adoption of modern workplace services while serving as the primary escalation point for complex incidents and cross-platform issues. The Director manages multi-million dollar budgets, develops precise forecasts, scales engineering teams and solutions to support organisational growth, and builds efficiency into the operating model by leveraging self-service capabilities, AI-powered automation, and continuous process optimisation.

Reports To: Chief Information Officer (CIO)

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Vision:

Partner with organisational leaders to align strategy, develop solutions and resolve complex problems

Define and communicate modern workplace strategy aligned with business objectives, security requirements and the technology roadmap

Set architectural standards and design principles for collaboration, workforce identity, endpoints and applications

Drive digital transformation to improve employee productivity, experience and operational efficiency

Establish governance for licensing, vendors, compliance and cost optimisation

Champion security and workforce governance across modern workplace services

Resolve conflicts between IT operational standards and business needs collaboratively

Influence peer engineering leaders and business stakeholders without direct authority

Collaboration Platforms Engineering:

Own global Microsoft 365 design and delivery (Office, Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, OneDrive) and supporting tools (Power Platform, Slack, Dropbox, Miro)

Set collaboration governance, data classification, retention and DLP standards

Optimise M365 licensing and manage third-party collaboration integrations

Govern AI agents and copilots within collaboration platforms

Drive adoption of modern collaboration practices while maintaining security

Identity & Access Engineering:

Lead workforce identity design and implementation (Active Directory and Entra ID) as foundational security controls

Establish global identity lifecycle management (ILM) for joiners, movers, leavers, rehires and contractors across regions and platforms

Implement identity governance, access reviews and reporting for least-privilege access and compliance (SOX, GDPR, ISO 27001)

Oversee workforce privileged access management (PAM) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) strategies

Manage non-human identities (service accounts, application credentials, API tokens) across on-premises and cloud infrastructure

Ensure resilient, auditable identity systems and rapid threat response; manage hybrid AD and Entra ID environments

Endpoints & Remote Applications Engineering:

Lead strategy and operations for Windows, macOS and emerging endpoint platforms

Oversee Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), remote application delivery and virtual workspace infrastructure

Set endpoint security, patching, compliance and device management policies

Deliver application lifecycle management, endpoint provisioning and image management

Implement centralised endpoint analytics and reporting for visibility and compliance

Support BYOD and contractor device policies within security and governance boundaries

Enable remote and hybrid work with secure, high-performing endpoint technologies

Operational Leadership & Escalation:

Set operational governance, SLAs, KPIs and metrics across modern workplace services

Equip operations teams to resolve issues independently through processes, tools and knowledge management (runbooks, automation, decision trees)

Act as primary escalation point for critical incidents, complex problems and cross-platform issues beyond operations teams’ scope

Remove organisational and procedural barriers and support operational problem-solving

Improve operational efficiency and incident response through data analysis, process refinement and coaching

Manage third-party partnerships, vendor contracts, outsourced service governance and vendor escalations

Set cost allocation frameworks and manage collaboration, workforce identity, endpoint and operational service budgets

Solutions & Change Management:

Lead change and release management for modern workplace transformations and updates

Direct end-user training, communications and adoption to improve experience and productivity

Oversee community engagement, user feedback and continuous improvement

Coordinate resource allocation and vendor preview programmes to shape future capabilities

Key Accountabilities & Success Metrics

Enable operations teams to maintain 99.9%+ availability for critical modern workplace services through effective governance and enablement

Meet or exceed established MTTR targets for all engineering support tickets

Automate the provisioning of requests through ServiceNow, dentsu tools such as Chatbot, Support AI or API driven provisioning

Ensure at least 75% of tickets are handled through self-service or automation

Achieve zero critical security findings in annual workforce identity and endpoint audits (AD, Entra ID, PAM)

Maintain 100% compliance with regulatory frameworks (SOX, GDPR, ISO 27001, HIPAA as applicable)

Complete annual identity governance reviews and access certifications on schedule

Ensure 100% compliance with joiner, mover, leaver process

Reduce licensing costs through optimisation and vendor negotiation

Reduce operational overhead through automation and process improvement

Deliver projects within budget and on schedule

Achieve ROI targets for major modern workplace investments within 12-18 months

Achieve 85%+ adoption of modern workplace capabilities across the organisation

Achieve 90%+ satisfaction on user onboarding experience

Reduce time-to-productivity for new hires by 30% through modern workplace automation

Complete modern workplace transformation roadmap milestones on schedule

Optimise all request provisioning time from days/hours to minutes through automation and process optimisation

Required Qualifications & Experience

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field

Master's degree preferred

At least 15 years in IT operations, infrastructure, or technology leadership roles

At least 10 years in workforce identity management, directory services (Active Directory, Entra ID), endpoint management, or related infrastructure roles

Proven experience managing large-scale global technology programmes and organisational transformation across multiple geographies

Deep hands-on experience with Active Directory, Entra ID (Azure AD), directory services, hybrid identity sync, cloud identity architecture, access management, and on-premises to cloud integration patterns

Solid understanding of endpoint management (Windows, macOS), MDM, and emerging device technologies

Understanding of PAM (privileged access management) for workforce and infrastructure, identity governance, and compliance frameworks

Experience with both ITIL Frameworks and DevOps principles

Strategic thinker with ability to translate business requirements into technology solutions

Strong executive presence and communication skills; comfortable presenting to C-level leadership

Proven ability to lead, mentor, and develop high-performing teams across matrix structures; experience leading initiatives where you influence without direct authority

Travel up to 10% for global team engagement and organisational presence

Demonstrated commi