Security Engineer III

Schurz Communications; New Knoxville (OH); Hybrid; USD 108,000 - 138,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) program with company match

Generous PTO program

Wellness program

Disability coverage

Job summary

Schurz Communications is seeking a Security Engineer III to own the firewall estate across six properties, define reference architecture, and drive the posture roadmap.

This senior individual contributor role is hands-on: write standards, execute high‑risk migrations, and present results to the Risk Committee. You will collaborate with vendors, maintain the documentation library, and ensure multi-site compliance under NIST and CIS controls.

Qualifications

• Eight+ years in network and security engineering with leadership experience.
• Proven multi-site security architecture experience delivering standards.
• Expert-level firewall platforms and centralized management know-how.
• Experience with provider security depth: BGP, DDoS, and network separation.
• Strong ability to document standards and create decision records.
• Able to define roadmaps and present recommendations to executives.

Responsibilities

• Own the firewall estate for six properties: standard, platform strategy, refresh roadmap, and vendor relationship.
• Define the firewall reference architecture: platform selection, HA model, topology, zone model, and policy standard.
• Decide estate consolidation vs. mixed estate with consistent management.
• Own multi-year refresh and budget defense; personally execute high-risk migrations.
• Approve firewall changes deviating from standard and close open exceptions.
• Define access-control and segmentation reference architecture across properties.
• Author hardening baselines and measure drift; own the standards library and lifecycle.
• Lead design reviews of Tier II outputs and approve/reject deviations.
• Maintain authoritative network understanding and data-flow models.
• Write and maintain security documentation, runbooks, and decision records.
• Own posture roadmap mapped to NIST CSF and CIS Controls; manage BEAD-related plans.
• Act as incident commander for major security incidents across properties.
• Drive policy-as-code, drift detection, and audit evidence in automation pipelines.

Skills

Eight+ years in security engineering

Multi-site security architecture

Firewall expertise

Documentation and standards

Roadmap planning

Executive communication

Job description

This role owns the firewall estate, security architecture, and standards for all six properties, the documentation library behind them, and the posture roadmap that sequences the work, and personally implements the hardest parts of it. This is a senior individual contributor role, not a management position. Expect to be writing a standard in the morning, converting a property to it night, and presenting the result to the Risk Committee the following week.

Position Title

Security Engineer III

Location

Remote (within driving distance of a Schurz property, see locations below)

Rate

$108,000 - $138,000 annually

Reports to

VP, Business Technology

Position Type

Full-time

Firewall Estate Ownership — Primary Responsibility

• Own the firewall estate for all six properties: the standard, the platform strategy, the refresh roadmap, and the vendor relationship. This is the accountability that does not move.
• Define the firewall reference architecture — platform selection, high-availability model, management topology, zone model, and the policy standard every property implements.
• Decide whether the estate consolidates onto one vendor and drive that conversion, or document why a mixed estate is the right answer and how it will be managed consistently.
• Own the multi-year refresh and capacity plan as a budget line, and defend it.
• Personally execute the high-risk conversions, migrations, and cutovers rather than delegating them.
• Hold final approval on every firewall change that deviates from standard and on every exception that stays open.

Architecture and Standards

• Define the access-control and segmentation reference architecture for all six properties, replacing six locally grown conventions with one standard plus a documented deviation list.
• Author the hardening baselines platform by platform, and the method for measuring drift against them.
• Own the standards library itself: versioning, review cadence, ownership, approval path, and retirement of standards that no longer hold.
• Own the rule lifecycle governance model — naming, ownership, review cadence, expiration, exception register.
• Lead the conversion of each property onto the standard.
• Review and approve designs produced by Tier II; approve or reject deviations.

Internal Network Understanding

• Hold the authoritative picture of how all six networks actually work — edge, core, plant, subscriber, and management planes — including where they differ and why.
• Maintain the trust-boundary and data-flow model that segmentation decisions are made against, and keep it accurate as platform consolidation moves things.
• Be the person who can answer, without research, what is exposed where and what would happen if a given control failed.

Documentation as a Deliverable

• Own the documentation standard: what must exist for every property, in what form, reviewed how often, and who is accountable when it drifts.
• Ensure current security architecture documentation, diagrams, standards, runbooks, and decision records exist for all six properties, and enforce that they stay current rather than decaying between audits.
• Write the decision records that explain why a standard is what it is, so the next engineer does not relitigate settled questions.

Posture, Compliance, and Evidence

• Maintain a security posture roadmap mapped to NIST CSF and CIS Controls, with a defensible current-state assessment behind it, and sequence the work against it.
• Own the cybersecurity and supply chain risk management plans required for broadband grant programs. BEAD subgrantees must attest to a cybersecurity risk management plan reflecting the NIST framework and Executive Order 14028, plus a separate supply chain plan based on NISTIR 8276 and NIST SP 800-161, reevaluated periodically and resubmitted within 30 days of any substantive change.
• Support FCC CPNI obligations, lawful-process handling, and breach notification analysis across a multi-state footprint where notification clocks differ by state.
• Produce the evidence pack that satisfies auditors and cyber insurance underwriters without a fire drill each renewal.
• Define and report the metrics that go to the Risk Committee and executive leadership.

Internal Program Leadership and Vendors

• Lead major internal security initiatives end to end — zero-trust network access, privileged access management, out-of-band access resilience, internal endpoint protection consolidation, internal log platform decisions — including the implementation, not only the selection. Initiatives belonging to the managed services line are out of scope.
• Run vendor evaluations with real cost modeling sized to a mid-tier budget. The enterprise answer is frequently the wrong answer; knowing when to buy the smaller product is part of the job.
• Scope and govern third-party security engagements the company commissions, and own remediation of their findings.
• Support contract and renewal negotiation with technical justification; provide budget input and multi-year capital planning.
• Participate in threat-sharing appropriate to a smaller provider, including the small broadband provider ISAC community.

Incident Command and Readiness

• Serve as technical incident commander for major security incidents across properties, and as the hands during containment when nobody else can do it.
• Maintain forensic readiness: log retention, evidence handling, and the break-glass access path.
• Run tabletop exercises; coordinate with legal and compliance on notification thresholds and regulatory exposure.

Automation and People

• Drive policy-as-code, drift detection, rollback capability, and tamper-evident audit evidence in the automation pipeline — and write the code.
• Keep AI tooling in an advisory layer, out of the control path, with documented data-handling standards.
• Mentor Tier I and II engineers and build the bench that makes this role survivable when the incumbent is unavailable.

Required Qualifications

• Eight or more years in network and security engineering, with at least three in a senior or lead capacity setting standards rather than following them, while remaining hands-on.
• Proven multi-site security architecture experience where the candidate both designed and implemented the result.
• Expert-level firewall platform command, including centralized management at scale and migration leadership.
• Service-provider security depth: BGP security controls, DDoS mitigation strategy, subscriber-network separation, and an understanding of how carrier plant differs from enterprise infrastructure.
• Demonstrated ownership of a vulnerability and hardening program, including reporting to executives or a risk committee.
• A body of written standards and documentation they can point to and discuss. This is a screening requirement, not a preference.
• Self-directed at the roadmap level: able to enter an environment with no backlog and produce a defensible 12-month plan.
• Able to write and present a recommendation a non-technical executive can act on.

Preferred Qualifications

• CISSP or CISM; expert-level platform certification (PCNSE, NSE 8, CCIE Security).
• Prior experience at a regional operator, cooperative, or municipal provider — someone who has done this with a small team and a real budget rather than an enterprise one.
• Experience standardizing environments acquired or operated independently, where the starting point was six different ways of doing the same thing.
• Regulated-data experience: CPNI, PCI DSS scope reduction, CALEA-adjacent handling.
• Grant compliance exposure, particularly BEAD or state broadband program security requirements.
• Prior ownership of a security budget or vendor portfolio.

Authority and Self-Direction

Sets the security roadmap and their own work against it. Approves architecture and cross-property standards; owns the exception register. Final technical escalation. Escalates to the Vice President for budget, contractual, or organizational decisions only. Accountable for outcomes on a quarterly cadence rather than for task-level activity.

First-Year Success Measures

• Full ownership of the firewall estate established: one inventory of record, no firewall out of support, high-availability pairs tested, and a published refresh plan.
• A single firewall, access-control, and segmentation standard published and adopted at all six properties, with a documented deviation list rather than six local conventions.
• Complete, current security documentation for all six properties, with a review cadence that holds after the initial push.
• A 12-month posture roadmap in place, sequenced and defensible, with the first two initiatives delivered rather than planned.
• Grant, audit, and insurance evidence current and maintained on a calendar rather than a scramble.
• Sustained reduction in critical findings and in the age of open findings.
• Two engineers capable of leading a migration independently.

Conduct and Data Handling

• Handles customer proprietary network information and subscriber data. Strict adherence to CPNI, lawful-process, and internal data-classification standards is a condition of the role.
• Security tooling and administrative access are used only for authorized purposes; all privileged activity is logged and reviewable.
• AI tooling is used within the published data-handling standard — advisory only, never in the control path for production changes.

Working Conditions

• Remote, but must reside within driving distance of one of our property locations: Winona, MN; Sergeant Bluff, IA; Maricopa, AZ; Hagerstown, MD; Burlington, VT; or New Knoxville, OH
• Office, data center, headend, and hub site environments; occasional work in equipment rooms and outside-plant facilities.
• Ability to lift and position equipment up to 50 pounds and to rack and cable hardware.
• After-hours and weekend maintenance windows; participation in an on-call rotation with defined response expectations.
• Extended periods at a workstation; travel by vehicle between properties in multiple states.

Why Join Schurz Broadband Group?

When you join Schurz Broadband Group, you’ll be part of an award-winning company and team. We offer a comprehensive benefits package, including:

• 401(k) program with company match
• Generous PTO program
• Company wellness program
• Employer-paid short- and long-term disability
• And much more!

We are committed to providing an environment that gives each employee the opportunity to nurture their gifts and achieve their potential. Our mission is to pass on to future generations—customers, employees, communities, and owners—an organization that is even stronger and better than it is today.

Schurz Communications and its subsidiaries’ strategic objectives:

• We will attract, invest in, communicate with, and retain top talent.
• We will innovate, partner, experiment and create a better future together.
• We strive to continuously improve operating performance to ensure sustained growth.
• We will dynamically grow revenues by building and nurturing mutually beneficial and profitable customer relationships.

Equal Opportunity Employer

This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws.For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.