Description:

The Senior Technology Architect brings extensive expertise in cyber security and privacy controls to strengthen the cyber resilience of Ontario K–12 school boards. This role focuses on identifying vulnerabilities, cyber posture maturity gaps, guiding remediation, and enhancing protection for school boards' digital environments. The architect leads assessments, develops tailored action plans, and provides hands-on implementation guidance and support to improve the risk posture of school boards.

This resource is responsible for, but not limited to:

• Lead and conduct comprehensive cyber security and privacy assessments across Ontario K–12 school boards, including:
  

• Threat Risk Assessments (TRA) and Cyber Security Risk Assessments
  
• Privacy Impact Assessments (PIA)
  

• Develop improvement recommendations, and tailored, board-specific actionable remediation plans to address identified gaps, mitigate risks and improve overall cyber resilience of K-12 school boards
  
• Provide hands-on practical subject matter expertise and implementation guidance and support to enhance school board cyber protection capabilities, including:
  

• Strengthening existing cyber security controls
  
• Identifying, selecting, and implementing new cyber security controls
  
• Enhancing privacy safeguards with a focus on minors as a priority
  
• Complying with any applicable legislation, current and upcoming
  
• Aligning with sector-specific standards and best practices
  
• Right-sizing recommendations and solutions to the K-12 education sector
  

• Support the development and operationalization of cyber security controls, policies, and playbooks tailored to the K–12 education environment.
  
• Advise on findings, root cause analysis and mitigation strategies following security or privacy incidents, ensuring lessons learned are translated into improved practices.
  
• Produce and maintain risk logs, remediation plans, and technical documentation to support transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.
  
• Collaborate with ministry, school board and sector third-party cyber security personnel to share knowledge, assist with upskilling IT teams and guide implementation of recommended controls.
  
• Engage with internal and external stakeholders, including school board leadership, IT teams, and government partners, to ensure alignment with broader cyber security initiatives and legislative requirements (e.g., Bill 194 / Enhancing Digital Security and Trust Act, 2024 (EDSTA)).
  
• Deliver presentations, briefings, and consultation sessions to communicate findings, recommendations, and progress updates.
  
• Monitor and report on project deliverables, providing regular status updates and ensuring timely completion of assigned tasks.
  
• Stay current with evolving cyber threats, privacy regulations, and sector-specific risks, and incorporate this knowledge into engagements and recommendations.
  
• Manage and deliver multiple concurrent cyber security engagements across diverse school board environments, prioritizing, and maintaining high-quality deliverables under tight timelines.
  
• Delivering on other duties as assigned.
  
• This work involves working in close partnership with various government departments, the K-12 education sector, telecommunications providers, and network and cyber security technology vendors to develop tailored approaches and implementation plans. To support various stakeholders, the resource must be available to perform hands-on configuration, troubleshooting and training at the client site. Therefore, the resource must be available to travel same day or overnight in Ontario, as needed.
  
• The unit manager may assign other related board work for other unit or branch initiatives, as required.
  

Experience and Skill Set Requirements:

Skill Set Requirements:

Cyber Security and Privacy:

• 10+ years' experience with cyber security processes and regulations, and standards, preferably for the public sector or broader public sector.
  
• 10+ years' experience with cyber security and privacy audits and assessments including:
  

• Threat risk assessments
  
• Cyber security assessments
  
• Assessments of cyber security governance, risk and compliance (GRC) programs
  
• Privacy impact assessments
  

• 10+ years' experience evaluating technical and administrative controls, producing cyber security and privacy findings and risk logs/reports and preparing remediation plans, preferably for the public sector or broader public sector.
  

• Experience using maturity models (e.g. CMMI, NIST-based, proprietary models) to evaluate cyber security capabilities.
  

• 10+ years' experience applying cyber security industry frameworks such as NIST Cyber Security Framework (CSF) v1.1/v2.0, CIS Controls v8, COBIT and ISO 27001
  

• Experience working with the new NIST CSF v2.0
  

• 10+ years of demonstrated experience applying privacy frameworks such as the NIST Privacy Framework, ISO/IEC 27701.
  
• Excellent knowledge and exposure to Internet of Things (IoT) security issues.
  
• Excellent knowledge of Ontario, federal and international privacy laws applicable to the Ontario K-12 sector (such as Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA), Canadian Privacy Act, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), etc.).
  
• Knowledge of Bill 194 and EDSTA, 2024.
  

Communication Skills and Experience:

Strong communication skills as demonstrated through:

• 10+ years' experience in presenting technical concepts to executives, management teams and diverse stakeholder audiences
  
• 10+ years' experience in preparing written materials (e.g., security and privacy reports, status reports, recommendations, briefing notes), and translating technical findings into clear actionable reports.
  

Industry Certifications / Relevant Degrees:

• Security certification is mandatory (Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) or Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)).
  
• Privacy certification is preferred (Certified Information Privacy Technologist (CIPT), Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM) or Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP)).
  

Public Sector Experience:

• 5+ years of hands-on experience working in large public sector environments. Preferably experience working with the Ontario K-12 education sector.
  
• Applied experience with Ontario's cyber security standards. The security standards (GO-ITS 25.X) can be found on the Government of Ontario information technology standards website: https://www.ontario.ca/page/information-technology-standards#section-6.
  
• Knowledge of Government of Ontario relevant legislation (e.g., Bill 194 / EDSTA).