Chief Information and Technology Officer - 48000901

Requisition No: 886018

Agency: Department of Education



Pay Plan: SES

Position Number: 48000901

Salary: AGENCY TO UPDATE

Posting Closing Date: 10/27/2026

Total Compensation Estimator Tool

Florida Department of Education

Office of The Commissioner

Location: Tallahassee

Position Title: Chief Information and Technology Officer (SES)

SALARY IS BASED ON CANDIDATE'S EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS

OFFICE CONTACT:

Jennifer Boswell, 850-245-9867

JOB DESCRIPTION:

The Chief Information Officer is a cabinet-level executive who sets the Department's technology vision, architecture, and investment agenda; runs the Division of Technology and Innovation (including the Education Data Center and related application, infrastructure, data, security, and service functions); and represents FDOE with the Florida Digital Service (or successor enterprise IT body), the Legislature, school districts, colleges, and vendors.

Success in this role is defined by four outcomes: (1) a funded, governed, and executing plan to exit the mainframe and retire COBOL-dependent applications on a public timeline; (2) a production-ready AI and advanced analytics program that improves operations and decision-making under a clear risk and privacy framework; (3) measurable improvement in reliability, security, and service to program offices and local education agencies; and (4) a rebuilt technology organization that can attract and keep modern engineering, data, and product talent.

The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) is seeking a transformation-minded Chief Information Officer to serve as the agency's senior technology executive and statutory agency CIO under section 282.3055, Florida Statutes. This is not a caretaker role. The next CIO will retire a remaining mainframe and COBOL/DB2 estate that still underpins core statewide education operations, stand up a durable cloud and data platform, and scale artificial intelligence in a way that is useful to districts, colleges, and the Department-without compromising student privacy, cybersecurity, or public trust.

A completed feasibility study frames enterprise mainframe modernization as a multi-year program-three phases over six years, with an estimated total cost of approximately $151 million-covering student data collection, education finance calculations, financial reporting, transcript exchange, assessment reporting, school identification, and capital outlay. Year-one work includes a program management office, COBOL and DB2 inventory and business-rule extraction, knowledge transfer from a shrinking specialist workforce, and cloud foundation work consistent with Florida's cloud-first policy and Chapter 60GG cybersecurity rules. The CIO will own that program end to end and will be judged on whether the mainframe actually goes away.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:

(Note: The omission of specific job duties does not preclude management from assigning specific duties not listed herein if such duties are a logical assignment to the position.)

The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) has an open position that is responsible for executing the following functions:

1. Enterprise modernization and mainframe exit

• Own the enterprise mainframe modernization program as a single accountable executive-scope, sequence, budget, vendors, risk, and legislative reporting.
• Complete and maintain a full inventory of COBOL, CICS, DB2, batch, and interface assets; extract business rules; map data and process dependencies; and publish a system-by-system retire, rewrite, replace, or encapsulate decision.
• Stand up a Program Management Office with independent verification and validation, stage-gate funding, and monthly executive dashboards that a non-technical cabinet and legislative staff can read.
• Move remaining workloads off the mainframe to cloud-native or commercially supported platforms consistent with s. 282.206, F.S. (cloud-first), Northwest Regional Data Center and enterprise hosting policy, and Chapter 60GG-2, F.A.C.
• Protect continuity of FEFP funding calculations, survey/data collections, transcripts, assessments, MSID, PECO, and related mission systems during cutover. No "big bang" that puts a school year at risk.
• Capture institutional knowledge from retiring mainframe specialists before it walks out the door; convert it into documented product and data contracts.

2. Scale artificial intelligence-responsibly and in production

• Publish and execute an agency AI strategy covering use-case intake, model risk, human-in-the-loop rules, procurement, evaluation, and retirement of tools that do not perform.
• Prioritize high-value, low-regret uses first: document intelligence, code and test generation for modernization, service-desk deflection, data-quality assistance, legislative and policy research support, and internal knowledge retrieval. Expand to instructional and district-facing tools only after governance, FERPA, and security controls are proven.
• Establish an AI review board (legal, privacy, program, security, and data) with authority to pause or kill deployments.
• Require vendors to meet data-residency, training-data, audit, and no-retention terms appropriate for student and staff records. Prefer architectures that keep sensitive data inside the State's control plane.
• Build internal capability so the Department is not permanently dependent on a single AI vendor or on shadow tools.
• Measure adoption and outcomes. AI that is not used, not evaluated, or not secure does not count as scaled.

3. Data, interoperability, and the K-20 information architecture

• Treat education data as a product: owned, documented, quality-measured, and reusable across program offices and authorized partners.
• Strengthen the K-20 Education Data Warehouse, survey collections, and longitudinal reporting so the Commissioner, State Board, districts, and Legislature can act on timely, trusted numbers.
• Reduce duplicative collections from districts and colleges; publish APIs and data contracts instead of one-off file drops wherever feasible.
• Align with statewide data and identity standards from the Florida Digital Service and the agency CIO workgroup.
• Partner with Accountability, Research and Measurement; Finance and Operations; Public Schools; Florida Colleges; Career and Adult Education; and Vocational Rehabilitation so technology follows the business, not the other way around.

4. Cybersecurity, privacy, and resilience

• Serve as the Department's senior executive for information security posture, working with the designated Information Security Manager / agency CISO and the State CISO / Cybersecurity Operations Center under s. 282.318, F.S.
• Drive identity, least privilege, logging, vulnerability management, incident response, and tabletop exercises that include mainframe-to-cloud transition risk.
• Protect student education records and other regulated data under FERPA, related federal grant conditions, and Florida public-records and cybersecurity law.
• Maintain tested disaster recovery and continuity of operations for funding, collections, and other time-critical cycles.

5. Architecture, platforms, and operations

• Set a target enterprise architecture: cloud landing zones, integration layer, identity, data platform, observability, and DevSecOps. Stop net-new development on dead platforms.
• Run reliable day-to-day operations-networks, endpoints, collaboration, service desk, application support-while the transformation work proceeds. Modernization cannot excuse outages.
• Rationalize the application portfolio. Every system has an owner, a cost, a risk rating, and a sunset or invest decision.
• Improve service levels to Department staff and to districts and colleges that depend on FDOE systems.

6. Investment, procurement, vendors, and the Legislature

• Build and defend the IT legislative budget request, including multi-year mainframe-exit and AI platform funding, with clear milestones the Legislature can hold the agency to.
• Advise the Commissioner and cabinet on technology risk, technical debt, and the true cost of delay.
• Run competitive, well-scoped procurements. Prefer outcomes and interoperability over lock-in. Hold integrators to acceptance criteria tied to retired mainframe MIPS, migrated workloads, and working products-not slide decks.
• Coordinate with Florida Digital Service project oversight where required and with NWRDC and other enterprise providers.

7. Organization, talent, and culture

• Lead the Division of Technology and Innovation. Hire, develop, and, where needed, restructure so the shop can do product, data, cloud, security, and AI work-not only keep a mainframe alive.
• Create career paths that retain remaining COBOL/DB2 expertise long enough to finish the exit, while recruiting engineers, architects, product managers, and data scientists who will run the next platform.
• Replace heroics and tribal knowledge with written standards, agile delivery where it fits public-sector constraints, and honest status reporting.
• Model a service culture: technology exists to make teachers, students, program staff, and district partners more effective.

8. Statutory and enterprise CIO duties

• Perform the duties of the agency chief information officer under s. 282.3055, F.S.: plan and manage agency IT services; implement procedures and standards consistent with enterprise policy; advise senior management; and help prioritize IT needs in the legislative budget request.
• Represent FDOE on the agency CIO workgroup and in enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, and cloud-first forums.
• Ensure accessibility of public-facing systems (s. 282.601 et seq., F.S.) and compliance with applicable records, procurement, and technology rules.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

• Strategic clarity. Can reduce a six-year, nine-figure program to a sequence a cabinet can fund and a delivery team can execute.
• Technical judgment. Enough depth in mainframe, cloud, data, identity, and AI to call vendor bluffs and protect the Department from fashionable but unfit architecture.
• Political and legislative fluency. Comfortable in Sunshine, appropriations, and public scrutiny.
• Operator's discipline. Transformation work does not excuse missed survey windows or funding-calculation failures.
• Talent magnet. Can hire in a market that pays private-sector CIOs far more than state SMS rates by offering mission, authority, and a real modernization mandate.
• Integrity and candor. Reports risk early. Does not confuse activity with progress.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

Required Licensure/Registration/Certification/Experience or Education:

• Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution in information systems, computer science, engineering, business, public administration, or a closely related field. Ten or more years of progressive executive or senior IT leadership may substitute on a year-for-year basis for the degree.
• Ten or more years of progressive information technology leadership, including at least five years leading a multi-function IT organization (applications, infrastructure or cloud, security, and data) in government, education, or a comparably regulated enterprise.
• Demonstrated record of delivering at least one large-scale modernization: mainframe or COBOL exit, core system replacement, cloud migration of mission systems, or equivalent transformation with published outcomes.
• Experience owning an IT budget, vendor portfolio, and legislative or board-level investment case.
• Working knowledge of cybersecurity and privacy obligations in a public or education setting.
• Ability to obtain and maintain any access required for State of Florida systems and to work in Tallahassee on a regular cadence.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

Preferences will be given to:

• Master's degree (MBA, MPA, MS in a technical field) or an executive credential such as CGCIO.
• Direct experience modernizing IBM mainframe / COBOL / CICS / DB2 estates, including business-rule extraction and coexistence architectures.
• Experience standing up or scaling an enterprise AI, machine learning, or intelligent-automation program with governance-not a pilot that never left the lab.
• K-12, higher education, or state education agency experience, including student information, education finance, assessment, or longitudinal data systems.
• Florida state government experience, including Chapter 282 / 60GG, Florida Digital Service engagement, legislative budget requests, and SMS/SES organizations.
• CISSP, CISM, PMP, cloud architect, or equivalent professional certification.
• Record of rebuilding an IT workforce-succession for legacy skills and hiring for cloud, data, and product roles.