Information Security Specialist

Company Description

Great Falls Public Schools is committed to fostering a safe, inclusive, and supportive learning environment where every student has equitable opportunities to succeed. The district strives to prepare students to navigate the future with quality education delivered by highly skilled and dedicated staff. With a strong belief in the value of diversity, collaboration with families and the community, and the importance of adaptability, Great Falls Public Schools promotes a culture of excellence. Rooted in the guiding principle of shaping engaged, lifelong learners, the district remains dedicated to being a foundation of growth and opportunity.

Role Description

This is a full-time, on-site role based in Great Falls, MT for an Information Security Specialist. This highly skilled technical leader will inherit, manage, and evolve our highly customized enterprise IT and security infrastructure. This hybrid role goes far beyond traditional security administration—it depends on a unique blend of proactive cybersecurity operations, ground-up network architecture, low-level systems programming, and full-stack C# development.

You will be managing everything from active threat hunting and daily security monitoring to custom-built authentication systems and enterprise firewalls.

Essential Functions:

• Cybersecurity Operations & Incident Response: Actively monitor, analyze, and correlate telemetry from Azure/Entra logs, FortiGate firewall traffic, Google Workspace logs, Custom IdP logs, Carbon Black logs and Windows Server event logs etc. to detect anomalies. Lead full-lifecycle incident response, behavioral threat hunting, and deep-dive digital forensics using VMware Carbon Black EDR.
• Vulnerability Management & Governance: Conduct regular vulnerability scanning and penetration testing across all network assets and custom-developed applications. Oversee critical, large-scale patch deployments for 5,000 endpoints. Develop, enforce, and audit IT security policies to ensure strict compliance with educational data privacy laws and cybersecurity insurance mandates.
• Email Security & Phishing Defense: Manage district-wide email security, maintaining and utilizing custom-built web applications dedicated to DMARC, SPF, DKIM, and MTA-STS analysis to prevent spoofing. Design and execute regular phishing simulation campaigns and security awareness training for district staff.
• Full-Stack Development & Application Maintenance: Maintain, debug, and extend a portfolio of 9 fully custom-developed district applications (including our security tools and IdP) built on C# / ASP.NET Core MVC. Engineer complex PowerShell automation scripts to streamline district-wide system administration and data orchestration.
• Next-Gen Identity Management (IAM): Oversee our custom-built Central Sign-On Identity Provider (IdP). Manage native code-level integrations for FIDO2/WebAuthn, OIDC, and SAML2, federating identities seamlessly across Microsoft Entra, Google Workspace, and PowerSchool SIS(OracleDB).
• Network Architecture & AI Integration: Configure and manage Fortinet FortiGate enterprise firewalls completely from scratch. Maintain and optimize a proprietary Public DNS Server (with AI/ML anomaly detection) and a custom RADIUS server for WiFi authentication.
• Infrastructure & Database Security: Architect a highly available 3-node Hyper-V cluster. Write and optimize secure injection-proof T-SQL and Oracle PL/SQL queries to maintain encrypted data pipelines across Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases.
• Unix/Linux Administration: Administer: secure and maintain a critical fleet of 10-20 Unix/Linux servers. Provide dedicated support and security hardening for these systems that cannot be decommissioned, ensuring seamless operation and preventing operational knowledge gaps.

Qualifications:

• Cybersecurity Operations: Hands-on experience with log analysis (Azure, Firewall, Carbon Black, Server logs, etc.), formal incident response methodologies, vulnerability management, email security standards (DMARC), and enterprise EDR platforms (VMware Carbon Black).
• Software Engineering & Automation: Demonstrable proficiency in Advanced C# / ASP.NET Core MVC, front end development (HTML/JS/CSS), and advanced PowerShell scripting.
• Low-Level Systems Programming: Experience with raw socket programming (TCP/UDP), byte-level data manipulation, and binary packet parsing.
• Protocol & Network Mastery: Absolute, code-level understanding of the DNS protocol, RADIUS, and modern IAM protocols (FIDO2, OIDC, SAML2). Proven track record of designing enterprise firewalls (FortiGate) from scratch.
• Database & Systems: Strong background in Hyper-V virtualization and writing secure optimized queries for both SQL Server and Oracle environments.

Additional Experience:

• Practical experience integrating AI / Machine Learning models into backend systems for Risk-Based Authentication (RBA) or predictive threat detection.
• Experience managing IT security, data privacy, and identity life cycles within a K-12 educational environment.
• Relevant industry certifications (e.g., CISSP, CISM, Fortinet NSE, CEH).

EMPLOYMENT:                5 days/week; 8 hours/day; 12 months/yr   

LOCATION:                        District Offices

SALARY:                             $68,140 depending on experience

CLOSING DATE:               Open Until Filled

• A current District classified application (within the past 12 months) must be received in the Frontline Application System (available at www.gfps.k12.mt.us)  by the closing date.