Azure devops administrator

Duties and Responsibilities

Azure Boards and process customization (core of the role)

•      Create and maintain inherited processes (from Agile, Scrum, Basic or CMMI) and manage which projects use which process.
•      Customize work item types, fields, picklists, forms, layouts, states, state categories, transitions, rules, reason values and backlog levels.
•      Implement team-specific workflows, for example adding states such as Ready for QA, Ready for UAT, Ready for Pre-Prod and Ready for Prod to the Bug workflow, and align board columns and swimlanes to them.
•      Design and manage work item hierarchies across portfolios, epics, features, user stories, tasks, defects, risks, issues, decisions, milestones and other approved work item types.
•      Configure Areas, Iterations, team backlogs, sprint settings, Delivery Plans, queries, charts, dashboards and notifications.
•      Perform impact analysis and regression validation before changing shared processes or production projects, and consolidate duplicate or drifting processes.

Organization and tenant governance

•      Administer Azure DevOps organizations, projects and teams in line with enterprise standards, including organization ownership, Project Collection Administrators and naming conventions.
•      Govern organization creation using Microsoft Entra tenant policies (e.g., restricting who can create new Azure DevOps organizations) and manage the Microsoft Entra connection for each organization.
•      Handle ownership transfer and recovery of organizations when an owner or administrator leaves, including working with Microsoft support where required.
•      Manage organization policies such as external guest access, third-party application access via OAuth, SSH authentication, public projects and limiting user visibility (project-scoped users).
•      Govern Personal Access Tokens (PATs): enforce tenant PAT policies (maximum lifespan, full-scope and global PAT restrictions), plan the move away from global PATs, and adopt service principals, managed identities and workload identity federation where possible.
•      Manage access levels and licensing (Stakeholder, Basic, Basic + Test Plans, Visual Studio subscribers), billing through the linked Azure subscription, group rules and periodic license optimization.

Security, access and compliance

•      Configure users, teams, Microsoft Entra ID groups, Azure DevOps security groups, access levels and role-based permissions using least-privilege principles.
•      Provide controlled access for external contractors and partners (B2B guest access, Stakeholder access, project-scoped visibility, read-only security groups) without over-provisioning.
•      Maintain controlled administrator groups, access reviews and separation of duties.
•      Support audit and compliance through Azure DevOps audit logs and audit streaming, traceable approvals, change records, access evidence and configuration documentation.

Data migration, bulk operations and reporting

•      Plan and execute bulk work item creation, updates, imports, exports and corrections using CSV import, Excel (Azure DevOps Office Integration), REST APIs or approved migration tools.
•      Validate data quality after imports or configuration changes, including required fields, state mappings, parent-child links, assignments, history and reporting consistency.
•      Support repository and project migrations (e.g., between organizations or from Azure DevOps to GitHub using GitHub Enterprise Importer), including mapping organizations, projects and repositories.
•      Build dashboards, Analytics Views, OData queries and Power BI-ready data structures for program status, milestones, risks, dependencies, backlog health and delivery reporting.

Automation, integrations and support

•      Develop administrative automation and validation scripts using PowerShell, Python, Azure DevOps REST APIs or the Azure DevOps CLI.
•      Support integrations between Azure DevOps and approved enterprise tools (Power BI, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, ServiceNow) and troubleshoot authentication, permissions, synchronization and reporting issues.
•      Provide day-to-day platform support, triage incidents and service requests, perform root-cause analysis and coordinate escalations with Microsoft or internal platform teams.
•      Create and maintain configuration specifications, runbooks, SOPs, knowledge articles, training materials and release notes.
•      Provide onboarding, office hours and practical guidance to project managers, product owners, analysts and delivery teams on effective use of Azure Boards.
•      Deliver changes within established change-control and release-management processes; prioritize competing requests and work independently.

Must-Have Skills (Non-Negotiable)

Candidates must have hands-on, recent experience with every item below. Training or theoretical knowledge alone is not enough.

•     

  Inherited process customization:

  creating inherited processes and customizing work item types, fields, states, rules, forms and backlog levels.
•     

  Azure Boards administration:

  Areas, Iterations, teams, backlogs, boards, queries, dashboards and Delivery Plans for multiple projects.
•     

  Organization governance:

  organization settings and policies, ownership, Microsoft Entra connection and tenant policies, and PAT policies.
•     

  Security and access:

  Azure DevOps security groups, permissions inheritance, access levels and licensing, Microsoft Entra groups, and external/guest user access.
•     

  Bulk work item operations:

  CSV/Excel import and update, data mapping and post-load validation.
•     

  Reporting:

  queries, dashboards, Analytics Views and Power BI integration.
•     

  Scripting:

  PowerShell or Python with the Azure DevOps REST API for administration and automation.
•     

  Experience:

  6+ years in IT and 3+ years of Azure DevOps administration supporting enterprise-scale project or portfolio management (Agile, Scrum, Kanban, waterfall or hybrid).

Good-to-Have Skills

•      Process-template consolidation, inherited-process governance, project onboarding and controlled configuration releases.
•      Azure DevOps to GitHub migrations (GitHub Enterprise Importer) or cross-organization migrations.
•      Working knowledge of Git repositories, branch policies, YAML pipelines, environments and approval checks, sufficient to support project-level administration and coordinate with engineering teams.
•      Azure Artifacts feed administration (feeds, views, upstream sources, permissions).
•      Experience in regulated, audited or controls-driven environments.
•      Microsoft certifications such as AZ-400 (DevOps Engineer Expert) or AZ-104 (Azure Administrator).
•      B.A. or B.S. in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.