Network Security Engineer

Title: Network Security (Palo Alto) Engineer

Location: Houston, TX (3 days/week onsite)

Seeking a highly skilled Senior Network Security Engineer with deep expertise in Palo Alto firewalls. The ideal candidate will be responsible for designing, implementing, maintaining, and troubleshooting enterprise firewall solutions in a large-scale network security environment.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement Palo Alto firewall policies, NAT rules, VPN configurations, and security zones.
• Deploy, configure, and manage Palo Alto firewalls including policies, NAT, VPN, IPS, and threat prevention features.
• Demonstrate expertise in deploying, configuring, and managing Palo Alto firewall and VPN solutions across on-premises, cloud, and remote access environments, ensuring seamless integration and security
• Define, configure, and optimize firewall policies and rules
• Perform troubleshooting and root cause analysis for network security incidents and firewall-related issues.
• Manage security zones, access control policies, and URL filtering.
• Plan and execute firewall upgrades, patches, and migrations with minimal downtime.
• Monitor and respond to security events and incidents related to firewalls and network devices.
• Perform regular firewall rule reviews to optimize security and ensure compliance with security best practices while ensuring business continuity.
• Ensure security of routing protocols (BGP, OSPF), VLANs, and load balancing across the network.
• Involve in security audits, vulnerability assessments, and incident response to ensure network security compliance.
• Monitor network performance and proactively address bottlenecks, latency issues, and security breaches.
• Maintain detailed documentation for firewall configurations, security policies, and network diagrams
• Oncall rotation one week, every 5 weeks. Oncall schedule: Monday 7AM to Monday 7AM.
• Weekend support as needed for weekend deployments.

Required Skills:

• 5+ years of experience in Network Security Engineering.
• 3+ years of strong experience in Palo Alto Firewall
• Experience in log analysis, incident response, and security monitoring.
• Hands-on with VPNs (SSL/IPSec), NAT, IDS/IPS, Threat Prevention, and URL Filtering.
• In-depth knowledge of TCP/IP, routing, VLANs, NAT, VPN, IPS, IDS, and general network architecture.
• Understanding of network protocols (TCP/IP, BGP, OSPF, VLANs, DHCP, DNS, NAT, SNMP, IPsec, GRE, VXLAN).
• Must have excellent understanding of security architecture and integration
• Scripting experience using Power Shell or Python is a plus.
• Experience with change management and ITIL-based processes.
• Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills.
• Able to participate in oncall rotation schedule. One week for every 5 weeks. Monday 7AM to Monday 7AM.
• Nice to have: Certifications such as PCNSE, PCNSA, CISSP, or CCNP.