Senior Directory Services Specialist

🏗 We're Hiring: Senior Directory Services Specialist

📍 Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

🕒 Employment Type: Full-Time

💼 Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior

🌐 Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a construction-focused organization committed to delivering complex projects through operational excellence, secure technology infrastructure, effective governance, and collaborative project delivery. Our multidisciplinary teams span Project Management, Construction, Engineering, Procurement, Commercial, Legal, Finance, Human Resources, Design, Quality, HSE, Consultants, Contractors, Suppliers, Logistics, Administration, Information Technology, and Executive Leadership.

Our distributed workforce relies on secure, reliable, and well-managed directory services to access business applications, engineering systems, project documentation, communication platforms, and critical enterprise resources. We prioritize identity security, operational resilience, and effective access governance to protect sensitive information, support business continuity, and enable seamless collaboration across offices, construction sites, and external stakeholders.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Directory Services Specialist to administer, maintain, secure, and optimize enterprise directory services and identity infrastructure across the organization. The successful candidate will possess strong technical expertise in Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, directory architecture, authentication services, Group Policy, DNS integration, identity synchronization, access controls, and directory security.

This role will be responsible for ensuring the availability, integrity, security, and performance of directory services that support user authentication, authorization, device management, application access, and enterprise infrastructure. The specialist will lead complex troubleshooting, support directory migrations and modernization projects, strengthen identity security controls, and maintain reliable integrations across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Working closely with IT Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Network Operations, Cloud Engineering, Endpoint Management, Application Support, and Service Desk teams, the Senior Directory Services Specialist will help protect organizational identities, enforce least-privilege principles, reduce directory-related risks, and maintain dependable access to business-critical systems.

Key Responsibilities1. Enterprise Directory Services Administration

• Administer, maintain, and optimize Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) across enterprise environments.
• Manage directory objects, including user accounts, computer accounts, groups, organizational units, service accounts, and managed service accounts.
• Maintain directory structures, naming conventions, administrative boundaries, and organizational unit hierarchies.
• Manage account creation, modification, suspension, and deactivation in accordance with approved identity lifecycle procedures.
• Support directory services used by corporate offices, remote employees, project teams, construction sites, consultants, and authorized external personnel.
• Maintain accurate inventories of domain controllers, domains, forests, trusts, directory objects, and associated infrastructure components.
• Monitor directory service health, replication status, authentication performance, and infrastructure capacity.
• Review directory configurations regularly to identify obsolete objects, inconsistent settings, unsupported components, and operational risks.
• Maintain detailed technical documentation covering directory architecture, dependencies, administrative procedures, and configuration standards.
• Ensure directory services remain aligned with business requirements, enterprise architecture standards, and organizational security policies.

2. Active Directory Architecture and Infrastructure

• Design, implement, and maintain Active Directory domain and forest architectures that support scalability, security, resilience, and effective administration.
• Manage domain controllers, site configurations, replication topology, directory partitions, and related infrastructure components.
• Configure and maintain Active Directory Sites and Services to support geographically distributed offices and project locations.
• Troubleshoot domain controller health, replication failures, authentication errors, directory database issues, and service availability problems.
• Manage forest and domain functional levels, domain trusts, and infrastructure dependencies in accordance with approved architecture standards.
• Support the deployment, replacement, migration, and decommissioning of domain controllers.
• Review domain controller placement, network connectivity, site links, and replication schedules to optimize performance.
• Coordinate with Network and Infrastructure teams to resolve routing, firewall, DNS, time synchronization, and connectivity issues affecting directory services.
• Assess infrastructure capacity, system dependencies, and failure scenarios to identify potential service risks.
• Recommend architecture improvements that strengthen resilience, simplify administration, and reduce operational complexity.

3. Microsoft Entra ID and Hybrid Identity

• Administer and support Microsoft Entra ID for cloud identity, authentication, application access, and hybrid identity integration.
• Maintain synchronization between on-premises Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID using supported identity synchronization technologies.
• Troubleshoot synchronization errors, duplicate identities, attribute mismatches, authentication failures, and directory provisioning issues.
• Support hybrid identity configurations involving Microsoft 365, enterprise applications, cloud infrastructure, and integrated business services.
• Configure and maintain identity synchronization rules and attribute mappings in accordance with approved standards.
• Support cloud authentication methods, single sign-on, conditional access, and other identity security controls in coordination with relevant teams.
• Review synchronization scope, source-of-authority considerations, and identity lifecycle dependencies to prevent unintended access or data inconsistencies.
• Assist with identity modernization initiatives, including cloud adoption, hybrid identity improvements, and directory service consolidation.
• Maintain documentation covering synchronization architecture, service accounts, dependencies, recovery procedures, and operational controls.
• Ensure hybrid identity changes are appropriately tested, approved, and documented before implementation.

4. Group Policy and Configuration Management

• Design, configure, maintain, and troubleshoot Group Policy Objects (GPOs) across supported Windows environments.
• Implement security policies for password settings, account lockout, audit logging, endpoint configuration, and other applicable domain controls.
• Manage GPO inheritance, linking, filtering, precedence, and delegation in accordance with established governance requirements.
• Support the implementation of workstation and server security baselines in collaboration with Endpoint Management and Cybersecurity teams.
• Investigate Group Policy processing failures, configuration conflicts, replication inconsistencies, and policy application issues.
• Review existing policies to identify obsolete settings, excessive permissions, conflicting configurations, and potential security weaknesses.
• Test policy changes in controlled environments before enterprise deployment.
• Maintain version-controlled documentation of significant policy configurations, approvals, testing results, and rollback procedures.
• Coordinate policy deployment across corporate devices, project environments, servers, and remote endpoints.
• Recommend improvements that standardize configuration management and reduce administrative errors.

5. Identity Security and Privileged Access

• Strengthen directory security by implementing least-privilege principles and appropriate separation of administrative responsibilities.
• Review privileged groups, delegated permissions, administrative accounts, service accounts, and other identities with elevated access.
• Identify excessive privileges, unauthorized group memberships, inactive privileged accounts, and unnecessary administrative access.
• Support privileged access management initiatives and the protection of domain administration credentials.
• Implement or support secure administrative practices, including dedicated administrative accounts, controlled elevation, and appropriate authentication protections.
• Review service account permissions, ownership, authentication methods, and lifecycle management.
• Support the identification and remediation of legacy authentication methods, insecure protocols, and unnecessary directory permissions.
• Coordinate with Cybersecurity teams to address directory-related vulnerabilities and identity attack paths.
• Review changes to sensitive groups and directory objects using available auditing and monitoring capabilities.
• Maintain documented approval and review processes for high-risk directory changes and privileged access assignments.