TIERS Cybersecurity Operations Director

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Join the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) and be part of a team committed to creating a positive impact in the lives of fellow Texans. At HHSC, your contributions matter, and we support you at each stage of your life and work journey. Our comprehensive benefits package includes 100% paid employee health insurance for full-time eligible employees, a defined benefit pension plan, generous time off benefits, numerous opportunities for career advancement and more.

Explore more details on the Benefits of Working at HHS webpage .

Functional

Title:

TIERS Cybersecurity Operations Director

Job Title: Director III

Agency: Health & Human Services Comm

Department: TIERS OAPD Staff CISO

Posting Number: 18995

Closing Date: 12/28/2026

Posting Audience: Internal and External

Occupational Category: Computer and Mathematical

Salary Range: $7,716.66-$11,000.00

Pay Frequency: Monthly

Salary Group: TEXAS-B-28

Shift: Day

Additional Shift: Days (First)

Telework:

Travel:

Regular/Temporary: Regular

Full Time/Part Time: Full time

FLSA Exempt/Non-Exempt: Exempt

Facility

Location:

Job Location City: AUSTIN

Job Location Address: 1609 CENTRE CREEK

Other Locations:

MOS Codes: ,C0,111X,112X,113X,114X,20C0,30C0,40C0,611X,612X,631X,641X,648X,90G0,91C0,91W0 97E0,SEI
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Brief

Job Description:

This position is open to permanent residents or U.S. citizens only.

The TIERS Cybersecurity Operations Director serves as the executive leader responsible for cybersecurity operations supporting the Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System (TIERS) environment and associated platforms. This role provides strategic direction, operational oversight, and technical leadership to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of one of HHSC’s most mission-critical systems supporting benefits delivery to Texans.

The Director oversees Security Operations Center (SOC) activities specific to TIERS, including threat detection, SIEM strategy, vulnerability management, penetration testing coordination, and cyber incident response. This position ensures continuous monitoring of the TIERS ecosystem and drives rapid mitigation of threats to minimize operational and reputational risk to the agency.

Operating at a senior leadership level, the Director collaborates closely with infrastructure, application development, cloud engineering, privacy, and program leadership to embed security into the TIERS technology lifecycle. The role is accountable for operational security readiness, attack surface reduction, and maintaining a mature defensive posture against advanced threats targeting public-sector systems.

Risk management, governance, compliance oversight, audit coordination, and regulatory control validation are performed by the HHSC Risk and Compliance divisions. This position partners with those teams to operationalize controls but does not own compliance functions, ensuring clear separation of duties and alignment with enterprise governance.

The Director III exercises extensive independent judgment, leads high-impact cyber response activities, manages senior security personnel, and contributes to the long-term modernization of HHSC cybersecurity capabilities.

Essential Job Functions (EJFs):

Attends work on a regular and predictable schedule in accordance with agency leave policy and performs other duties as assigned.

(30%) TIERS Security Operations Leadership

• Provide executive oversight for SOC operations protecting the TIERS environment and interconnected systems.
• Establish operational security strategy, priorities, and performance metrics aligned with agency cyber objectives.
• Direct advanced threat detection, triage, investigation, and response activities.
• Lead cyber incident command for TIERS-related events and coordinate cross-functional response efforts.
• Ensure continuous monitoring capabilities provide full visibility across application, database, identity, network, and cloud layers.
• Mature SOC processes through automation, orchestration, and intelligence-driven defense.
• Deliver executive briefings during major incidents and communicate risk posture to CISO leadership.

(25%) SIEM Strategy & Detection Engineering

• Provide strategic oversight of SIEM capabilities supporting TIERS, including platforms such as Splunk and Microsoft Sentinel.
• Ensure comprehensive log ingestion across TIERS infrastructure, applications, and security tooling.
• Champion detection engineering practices to improve identification of sophisticated attack patterns.
• Oversee…