Director of IT and Security Save

ProPublica, the leading nonprofit investigative news organization, is looking for a hands-on leader who can enable our editorial and business teams to work more effectively, ambitiously and securely using technology. This person will be expected to make a real difference in an organization that’s growing and moving at the pace of news.

Your work will play an essential role in fulfilling our mission: producing journalism that spurs real-world change. That means helping sharpen the tools we use to do our work, ensuring our systems are resilient, and keeping our staffers, our work and our sources secure. 

The nature of ProPublica’s journalism means we face consistent challenges and unique threats. Some recent examples include safeguarding the trove of never-before-seen information obtained while reporting “The Secret IRS Files” and protecting confidential material used in our series chronicling neglect in the Navy.

In this role, you will push us to use technology to better automate and collaborate, and to analyze our work — from newsgathering and publishing to critical functions such as HR, finance and audience development. To put it simply, you will help us find useful and delightful ways that technology can help us do our jobs better.

You’ll supervise and work alongside a support specialist to ensure that our technology, infrastructure and tools are as modern and robust as possible. Based in our New York City office, this role will report to the senior director of technology.

Our Environment

The ideal candidate is an expert with some of our existing infrastructure and is positioned to advocate for improvements.

We have over 200 employees using Mac computers and Apple and Android mobile devices in an increasingly distributed environment. Devices and services are managed with Mosyle, Okta and Google Workspace. Teams use Google Workspace and Slack for communications and productivity tools alongside many of the modern SaaS products you would expect.

Maintaining the security of our systems, and the privacy of our employees, sources, donors and community, has always been a primary concern. In a heightened environment, we continue to advance our security posture using modern encryption tools and services alongside tools like SecureDrop that help safeguard the anonymity of our sources.

We’re headquartered in New York City with additional offices in Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Chicago; Austin, Texas; Phoenix; and Berkeley, California. Many more employees are working entirely remotely, and we have plans to grow our staff.

Responsibilities

• Oversee the major technology solutions deployed across the organization.
• Deeply understand and anticipate the needs of the organization and help ensure we have the technologies and security approaches necessary to achieve our goals.
• Develop, articulate and execute an IT and security roadmap that aligns with these needs.
• Collaborate with the senior director of technology and chief product officer, as well as other stakeholders at ProPublica, to think creatively and responsibly about how new technologies can best support our work.
• Coordinate with the product team to ensure continuity between solutions configured and supported by IT and new software built and deployed by product.
• Monitor, model and mitigate information and operational security threats. Chair an internal security committee to ensure best practices. Represent the organization with outside security consultants and organizations.
• Develop, implement and regularly test a comprehensive disaster recovery plan to ensure organizational resilience.
• Manage the on- and off-boarding of employees from services and devices. 
• Ensure the help desk is adequately staffed and effective.
• Take accountability for a significant budget, including capital planning and forecasting. Evaluate vendors, negotiate technology contracts and serve as the primary billing and technical contact.
• Manage relationships with vendors and direct managed service providers to assist ProPublica with its technology goals.
• Manage, mentor and develop the IT team, including our support specialist and other consulting support, fostering an empathetic culture of high performance, continuous learning, strong communication and exceptional support.
• Handle support requests, design and lead training sessions, and create and maintain documentation.
• Travel, as necessary, to address technology issues in our remote offices, as well as for staff events and training. 

Experience and Skills

• 7+ years experience leading organizational technology teams, preferably including a media, nonprofit or technology organization.
• A demonstrated commitment to the technology needs of colleagues and a genuine interest in crafting solutions that enable their work while keeping them protected.
• A sophisticated understanding of risk assessment and mitigation, and the ability to solve problems nimbly and adaptively, particularly for reporters in the field and for issues related to managing and securing sensitive data.
• A preference to work hands-on, with strong computer networking skills and some programming or scripting skills. This is a small team and this person will need to work on both strategy and implementation.
• Experience as an agent of change inside an organization, effectively persuading end users to adopt new ways of working while balancing the priorities of leadership.
• Excellent written, verbal and interpersonal skills with the proven ability to successfully work across a complex organization.
• A friendly, entrepreneurial and collaborative approach to work.

This is a full-time position that includes benefits. The role is based in New York City and requires three days of in-office work per week. Applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S.

The expected salary range for this position is $170,000 to $180,000.

This is a good-faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position. The final salary figure will take into account a person’s experience, accomplishment and location. ProPublica is committed to paying its staff equitably, and these ranges should not be considered career salary limits or caps.

We will begin reviewing applications as we receive them, but we will continue to consider candidates as long as the posting remains live on our site.

Questions? Send an email to [email protected]. 

No phone calls, please.