Freese and Nichols is looking for an IT/OT Cybersecurity Lead to join our team. As our national footprint continues to grow, we are considering qualified candidates in any Freese and Nichols location. This company-wide leadership role is responsible for the strategic direction, growth, and technical quality of the IT and OT cybersecurity consulting services that Freese and Nichols delivers to clients. The role leads business development by building strategic client relationships and identifying, shaping, and winning new pursuits; builds and develops a team of cybersecurity professionals; and provides senior technical leadership on complex client engagements. Working with firm and market leadership, the IT/OT Cybersecurity Lead expands our service capabilities and guides the delivery of practical cybersecurity solutions that protect client operations across enterprise networks, control systems, and field infrastructure.
What You’ll Do:
Business Development
- Build and maintain relationships with key water, wastewater, and critical infrastructure clients, serving as their trusted cybersecurity advisor at the executive, IT, and operations levels.
- Shape the growth strategy for cybersecurity services, including target clients, service offerings, pricing approach, and annual growth goals, in coordination with firm leadership.
- Lead pursuits from opportunity identification through award, including capture planning, win strategy, scopes, fees, proposals, and interviews.
- Partner with client service leaders and project managers across offices to bring cybersecurity into larger pursuits such as SCADA master plans, treatment plant designs, and AWIA assessments.
- Track regulatory and funding drivers and turn them into new service offerings for clients.
- Build firm visibility through conference presentations, technical papers, webinars, and committee leadership in AWWA, WEF, ISA, and similar organizations.
Team Development
- Build the cybersecurity team by defining staffing needs, participating in hiring, and shaping the skills mix needed to support growth.
- Develop staff into project leads and client-facing advisors through mentoring, stretch assignments, technical review, and certification planning.
- Delegate project delivery to developing staff while maintaining oversight of quality and client outcomes.
- Establish career paths and succession plans for cybersecurity roles.
- Raise cybersecurity capability across I&C, SCADA, and electrical teams through internal training, so security is built into design work rather than added later.
Technical Leadership
- Set the technical direction, methodologies, and quality standards for cybersecurity services across the firm.
- Serve as technical lead on complex, high-visibility engagements and provide senior review on all others.
- Develop repeatable assessment methods, templates, and tools that let the team deliver consistently and scale.
- Provide senior direction on secure IT/OT architecture and technology selection, accounting for OT availability, safety, and legacy constraints.(This merges your two current architecture and technology bullets.)
- Advise firm leadership on contractual, liability, and risk issues tied to cybersecurity work, and help shape contract language and service terms.
The ideal candidate is an entrepreneurial IT/OT cybersecurity leader with a proven ability to grow client relationships, develop high-performing teams, and deliver practical cybersecurity solutions for critical infrastructure organizations.
Knowledge
- Possesses deep knowledge of IT and OT cybersecurity and how security strategies support client business objectives, operational reliability, and risk management.
- Understands the business of cybersecurity consulting, including market needs, service positioning, client relationship development, pursuit strategy, scope and fee development, and project financials.
- Understands approaches to building and developing technical teams, including workforce planning, competency assessment, mentoring, knowledge transfer, and leadership development.
- Possesses advanced knowledge of OT and industrial control system environments, including SCADA, PLC, RTU, HMI, and historian architectures, and the operational constraints that shape security decisions.
- Understands enterprise IT security domains, including identity and access management, endpoint protection, vulnerability management, logging and monitoring, and security operations, and their application across interconnected IT and OT environments.
- Understands how to translate cybersecurity assessments into prioritized investment plans and practical implementation roadmaps that account for risk, cost, system lifecycle, and operational requirements.
- Possesses comprehensive knowledge of cybersecurity frameworks, standards, and regulatory drivers relevant to client environments, including NIST, ISA/IEC 62443, CIS Controls, and AWIA.
- Maintains current knowledge of emerging threats, vulnerabilities, regulatory changes, and technology developments, including their implications for client priorities and cybersecurity service offerings.
- Understands the cybersecurity implications of emerging technologies such as cloud-connected SCADA, IoT, and AI, and can help clients evaluate risks, opportunities, and appropriate adoption strategies.
Technical Excellence
- Sets the technical direction and quality standard for cybersecurity services across the firm, and provides senior review on complex or high-risk work.
- Brings sound judgment to complex problems, weighing security against operational availability, safety, legacy equipment, and cost to reach recommendations clients can defend.
- Turns assessment findings into policies, plans, and roadmaps that clients can realistically carry out within their own staffing, budget, and uptime constraints.
- Ensures security requirements reach the drawings, specifications, testing, and commissioning on design and construction projects rather than arriving after the system is built.
- Develops repeatable assessment methods, tools, and lessons learned that improve consistency and help the team grow.
- Is recognized by client IT and operations staff as a credible technical authority, able to engage in detailed design discussions as well as executive briefings.
Leadership and Growth
- Builds and leads a high-performing cybersecurity team by shaping staffing needs, hiring well, and creating an environment where people want to grow and stay.
- Develops staff into project leads and client-facing advisors through mentoring, stretch assignments, and clear career paths.
- Builds long-term client relationships and is the trusted cybersecurity advisor for utility leadership and operations staff.
- Grows the cybersecurity service line by shaping offerings, partnering across offices, and winning new work.
- Communicates cyber risk in terms that resonate with utility leadership, operations staff, and technical teams, and builds support for decisions and funding.
- Is recognized as an industry voice through conference presentations, technical papers, and leadership roles in professional organizations.
Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in cybersecurity, information technology, computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, information systems, or a closely related discipline.
- 20+ years of cybersecurity experience, including significant experience in both IT and OT or industrial control system environments.
- A current CISSP, CISM, or CISA credential.
- A proven track record of winning and growing work with utility or critical infrastructure clients, including serving as the primary client contact and leading scopes, fees, proposals, and interviews.
- Experience leading complex, high-visibility cybersecurity engagements from pursuit through delivery.
- Experience building or growing a cybersecurity service offering, including defining services, staffing, and market positioning.
- Experience building and leading teams, including hiring staff and developing them into project leads and technical leads.
- Experience applying cybersecurity frameworks and regulatory requirements to assessments, policies, plans, and roadmaps.
- Experience serving water, wastewater, or other critical infrastructure utilities, including AWIA risk and resilience assessments and water-sector cybersecurity guidance.
- Ability to travel to client sites, treatment facilities, pump stations, control rooms, and industrial environments as project assignments require.
Preferred
- Master's degree in cybersecurity, information systems, engineering, or a related field.
- Consulting experience leading client-facing assessments, gap analyses, roadmaps, and advisory engagements.
- Existing relationships with water and wastewater utilities or other critical infrastructure clients in Freese and Nichols markets.
- Working knowledge of industrial protocols such as Modbus, DNP3, OPC UA, and EtherNet/IP, and the ability to explain their security limits to clients.
- Experience selecting and specifying OT security technologies, including OT monitoring and asset discovery, segmentation, secure remote access, firewalls, and SIEM platforms.
- Experience securing cloud and hybrid environments, including cloud-connected SCADA, edge computing, and IoT data pipelines.
- Experience leading incident response planning, tabletop exercises, post-incident reviews, and recovery planning for operational environments.
- Experience using approved AI tools responsibly to improve the quality and efficiency of deliverables.
- Leadership roles in professional organizations such as AWWA, WEF, ISA, ISACA, (ISC)2, InfraGard, or WaterISAC, including committee work, presentations, or publications.
