Executive Director, Security & Safety Strategy

Title: Senior Director, Security and Safety

Employee Status: Regular Full Time

Work From Home Option: Not Applicable

FLSA Status: Exempt

Job Overview:

The Senior Director, Security & Safety is an enterprise-wide executive leadership role within the Security Department, reporting directly to the Vice President of Security. This position exercises absolute governance and strategic ownership over NYRA’s comprehensive security matrix, shielding thousands of personnel, high-profile guests, and multi-million-dollar assets across all facilities. Moving beyond baseline administrative oversight, the Senior Director orchestrates the long-term architectural planning, cross-functional integration, and advanced execution of corporate security and safety initiatives.

The role drives organizational resilience by instilling accountability across subordinate management tiers, pioneering cost-efficiencies to maximize multi-million-dollar departmental budgets and proactively managing enterprise risks. Additionally, the Senior Director serves as a key regulatory emissary, ensuring all security, intelligence, and safety operations dynamically align with shifting state and federal legal statutes, internal policies, and modern corporate governance standards.

Essential Functions:

• Enterprise Risk Governance & Strategic Vision: Architect and govern the enterprise-wide risk management framework; continuously forecast emerging threat landscapes, quantify vulnerabilities, and deploy long-term strategic mitigation roadmaps to immunize the organization against financial, operational, and reputational risks.

• Policy Architecture & Regulatory Compliance: Author, formalize, and mandate comprehensive security and safety policies, corporate standards, and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs); establish rigorous internal compliance matrices that strictly align operations with evolving federal, state, and local regulatory statutes.

• Physical & Digital Security Infrastructure Management: Drive the strategic design, capital investment strategy, and deployment of integrated physical security matrices, including advanced access control architectures and state-of-the-art surveillance technologies (CCTV, intrusion detection), maximizing the protection of high-value assets and multi-site infrastructure.
• Crisis Management, Resiliency & Incident Leadership: Command the global incident command structure; design, test, and activate enterprise-wide crisis management and business continuity plans to ensure instantaneous, decisive containment and institutional recovery during catastrophic events or security breaches.

• Continuous Security Optimization & Audit Control: Systematically mandate and oversee rigorous, data-driven security audits, red-team penetration testing, and structural site vulnerability assessments to continuously validate operational readiness, optimize system efficiencies, and enforce absolute accountability.

• Fiscal Governance & Capital Allocation: Direct the strategic formulation, execution, and optimization of departmental operating and capital expenses and budgets; pioneer cost-efficiency frameworks, participate in high-value enterprise vendor contract negotiations, and align resource allocation with overarching corporate safety priorities to maximize return on security investments.

Preferred Skills:
• Enterprise Risk Governance: Proven ability to architect, embed, and oversee complex risk management frameworks; expert in designing comprehensive, multi-site security audit programs that proactively identify and mitigate emerging threats.
• Strategic & Analytical Vision: Decisive capability to transform abstract, complex security challenges into actionable strategies; utilizes advanced data modeling and root-cause analysis to protect the organization from catastrophic operational and financial risk.
• Executive Leadership & Succession Planning: Proven excellence in cultivating a culture of accountability across multi-tiered management groups; specializes in strategic mentorship, succession planning, and driving high-performance security operations aligned with broad corporate mandates.
• High-Stakes Crisis Communications: The ability to command information flow during critical, high-velocity incidents; orchestrates and delivers precise, authoritative communications to executives, and legal counsel under pressure.
• Adaptive Resilience & Policy Evolution: Strategic capability to continuously pressure-test existing security systems against shifting threat vectors; mandates dynamic policy adjustments to guarantee institutional agility and business continuity.
• Predictive Operational Intelligence: Expertise in managing data-driven security models that synthesize operational intelligence, behavioral patterns, and anomalies to optimize workforce deployment and physical resource allocation.
• Regulatory & Legal Governance: Strong comprehension of New York State statutes, local jurisdictional safety codes, and advanced fire safety principles; guarantees absolute institutional compliance while proactively shielding the organization from liabilities.
• Security Technology & Innovation: Broad oversight of enterprise-scale technology roadmaps, directing the integration and optimization of complex Video Management Systems (VMS), and advanced Access Control.
• Proactive Intelligence & Threat Monitoring: Extensive expertise in leveraging Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and geopolitical threat-monitoring networks to preemptively identify, track, and manage external risks to protect the organization.
• Strategic Public-Private Partnerships: Executive track record of building and leveraging high-level alliances with federal, state, and local agencies (e.g., NYPD, DHS, FBI, NYS Gaming Commission) to secure mutual intelligence sharing and operational support.
• Executive Labor Relations & Union Management: Executive-level experience steering security operations within complex, unionized environments; expert in driving favorable grievance resolutions, fostering labor peace, and maintaining strict collective bargaining agreement (CBA) compliance.
• High-Capacity Crowd Dynamics Strategy: Authoritative knowledge of crowd psychology, guest movement mechanics, and egress/ingress logistics for major sports and entertainment events hosting tens of thousands of attendees.
• Strategic Vendor Governance: Proven capability in commanding enterprise-scale procurement processes; negotiates high-value, third-party security contracts and enforces aggressive Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to maximize return on security spend.
• Executive Presence: Highly developed public presentation skills; possesses the executive presence necessary to brief executives, deliver testimony to regulatory bodies, and command enterprise-wide safety training initiatives.
• Ethical Leadership & Inclusive Safety: Champion of progressive, de-escalation-first security cultures; designs inclusive, community-centric safety programs that safeguard all guests and personnel while protecting the brand's public reputation.
• Unified Incident Command Architecture: Advanced command-level certification and deployment experience in FEMA/NIMS protocols; qualified to act as the Incident Commander during complex, multi-agency responses to large-scale public emergencies.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice, Emergency Management, Security Administration, Business Administration, or a related field required; Master’s degree (MBA, MS) highly preferred.

• Minimum of 10–12 years of progressive, high-level corporate security or law enforcement command experience; includes at least 5 years managing multi-tiered management teams and complex labor environments.

• Formal mastery and advanced certification in FEMA Incident Command System (ICS) protocols (e.g., ICS-300, ICS-400) and National Incident Management System (NIMS) frameworks.

• Active possession of premier industry certifications, such as Certified Protection Professional (CPP) or Physical Security Professional (PSP) from ASIS International preferred.

• Demonstrated success directing massive crowd dynamics, guest safety operations, and event logistics for high-capacity sports, entertainment, or horse racing venues hosting 20,000+ attendees.

• Proven history managing multi-million dollar capital (CapEx) and operational (OpEx) budgets alongside an acute understanding of New York State gaming and safety regulations.

• Ability to secure and maintain necessary state licensing and high-level corporate security clearances as mandated by state regulatory commissions and organizational governance.

Summary of Physical Requirements and Work Environment:

Blended mix of executive management and leadership that incorporates executive office time and field involvement with evaluating operations.

Pay Range / Salary: $130,000 - $175,000

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