Expert Needed: Build Self-Hosted Bulk Email System — Amazon SES + Postal + VPS (100,000 emails/week)

Project overview We are building a fully self-hosted, high-volume email blasting system to send marketing campaigns to a list of 700,000 contacts at approximately 100,000 emails per week. We need an expert who can build this from the ground up — not configure a third-party ESP like Mailchimp or HubSpot. The stack is Amazon SES as the SMTP relay, Postal as the self-hosted campaign server (open source), running on a DigitalOcean Ubuntu VPS, with 2–3 rotating sending domains and full DNS authentication. We have our AWS account, domain, and DigitalOcean access ready. Full technical documentation will be provided. Deliverables 1. Amazon SES configuration Domain verified in SES with DKIM enabled, custom MAIL FROM configured Production access (sandbox exit) approved and confirmed Two dedicated IPs added and warmed up Sending limits reviewed and quota confirmed for 100k/week 2. DNS authentication — SPF / DKIM / DMARC SPF, DKIM (all 3 CNAME records), and DMARC configured across 2–3 sending domains Bounce MX record configured per domain MXToolbox showing all records passing green 3. DigitalOcean VPS setup Ubuntu 22.04 LTS droplet (minimum 4GB RAM / 2 vCPU) Server hardened: SSH key auth, UFW firewall, fail2ban Docker installed and verified 4. Postal installation and configuration Postal installed via official installer, SSL via Let's Encrypt Connected to Amazon SES as SMTP relay All sending domains added and DNS verified in Postal dashboard Domain rotation configured across 2–3 domains 5. Tracking and deliverability Open tracking (pixel) and click tracking (redirect) enabled and tested Hard bounce auto-suppression configured Gmail and Yahoo Postmaster Tools registered No blacklist entries confirmed on MXToolbox 6. Testing and handover End-to-end test email confirmed in Gmail inbox (not spam) mail-tester.com score of 8/10 or higher 8-week IP warm-up schedule documented Written handover doc with credentials, commands, and monitoring guide 30-minute walkthrough call