Data Protection Engineer

About the role

The Data Protection & Security Engineer will serve as the primary owner of First Students data protection capability while also providing hands-on security engineering support across cloud, infrastructure, and application security domains. This is a practitioner role. The position partners with IT, I&O, and Legal teams to design and operate security controls that protect student, employee, and operational data across cloud and on-premises environments. The role defines what must be protected and how, coordinates with I&O and Data teams to ensure controls are implemented correctly, and builds validation and reporting of outcomes. This role is a direct replacement for a departing senior team member who owned both data protection and security engineering. Candidates must be comfortable holding both domains simultaneously and ramping quickly into an active program.

Responsibilities

• Identify and assess: Own enterprise data protection risk assessments, classification standards, and control effectiveness evaluations. Identify data exposure risk across cloud, SaaS, and on-premises environments. Contribute to vulnerability assessments and architecture reviews within the Cybersecurity function.
• Securely Build & Protect: Design and define data protection control requirements and standards for DLP, encryption, key management, and data governance across cloud and on-premises environments. Work with I&O and Data teams to ensure controls are implemented to Cybersecurity specifications; validate implementation outcomes. Provide security engineering expertise across cloud infrastructure and endpoint security domains.
• Monitor, Hunt, Detect: Monitor for data misuse, exfiltration, and policy violations. Integrate DLP detection capabilities with SOC workflows. Support SIEM log source expansion and alert quality improvements in coordination with