Microsoft Licensing Optimization Specialist

Responsibilities:

Microsoft license optimization

• Analyze Microsoft 365 license assignments, entitlement structures and available usage information across the organization.
• Identify licenses that can be downgraded, reassigned or removed without negatively affecting business operations, security or compliance.
• Provide transparent, data-based recommendations for reducing E5 consumption and improving
• the overall license mix.
• Quantify potential savings and track agreed optimization measures through to completion.
  Business and technical use case assessment
• Work with stakeholders from corporate functions, workplace services, operations and shopfloor environments to understand actual requirements.
• Translate business and technical use cases into the Microsoft capabilities and license components that are genuinely required.
• Challenge existing assignments constructively and identify lower-cost alternatives where the full E5 capability set is not needed.
• Consider dependencies involving identity, endpoint management, collaboration, security, compliance and automation before recommending changes.

External workforce review

• Perform a structured review of Microsoft licenses assigned to external users.
• Assess whether access and functionality are still required and whether the assigned license level is appropriate for the individual use case.
• Recommend reduction or complete removal where a license is not justified.
• Support clear joiner, mover and leaver rules to prevent licenses remaining assigned after the business need has ended.

Governance and stakeholder coordination

• Collaborate with Digital Business Solutions, Global Workplace, Identity & Access Management, Information Security, Procurement, HR and relevant business representatives.
• Review existing provisioning and assignment logic and recommend sustainable controls for future license demand.
• Document decisions, assumptions and exceptions in a way that is auditable and understandable for business and IT stakeholders.
• Prepare concise management updates covering consumption, opportunities, decisions, risks and realized savings.

Required skills:

•  Demonstrated experience in Microsoft licensing, software asset management, IT asset management or Microsoft 365 commercial optimization in a large enterprise environment.
• Very good knowledge of Microsoft 365 licensing concepts and the functional differences between E3, E5 and related add-on licenses.
• Practical understanding of licensing implications for Microsoft Teams, Entra ID, Intune, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Purview, Power Platform and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Experience reviewing user populations, consumption data, commercial entitlements and business requirements to derive actionable optimization measures.
• Fluent English; German is an advantage.
• Strong understanding of Microsoft 365 services, Entra ID, user lifecycle processes and group-based license assignment.
• Ability to analyze complex requirements across office-based, operational and shopfloor use cases.
• Advanced data analysis skills, ideally including Excel and Power BI or comparable reporting tools.
• Ability to recognize functional, security and compliance dependencies before proposing a license reduction.