Cybersecurity Engineer (Akamai)

Cybersecurity Engineer (Akamai)

12+ Months Contract

HYBRID - Cincinnati, OH

AKAMAI experience is an absolute must have as this will be the primary tool the contractor uses. Cloudflare is a secondary tool and will be a must have experience as well.
Absolutely must have 3-6 years of experience will not be considered an entry level position.

About the Role
We are seeking a Security Engineer (WAF SME) to join a dynamic security operations function. In this role, you will lead day-to-day operations, tuning, and incident response for our Web Application Firewall (WAF) and broader Web Application & API Protection (WAAP) stack—Akamai (primary) and Cloudflare (secondary).
You will maintain platform stability, drive false-positive reduction, improve protection efficacy against evolving threats, and ensure changes move safely through our standard change processes. You will collaborate closely with SOC/IR, App/Dev, SRE, and Network teams and participate in an on-call rotation for major incidents.
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What You Will Be Doing
Operational Support & Incident Handling
• Monitor and action WAF/edge security ticket queues; resolve incidents and service requests with clear, timely communication.
• Triage and respond to Layer 7 events (e.g., bot abuse, credential stuffing, API abuse, SQLi/RCE attempts, L7 DDoS), escalating as needed.
• Provide on-call support for Sev 1/Sev 2 incidents; collaborate with SOC/IR, SRE, and application owners on containment and recovery.
Platform Administration & Tuning
• Onboard, configure, tune, and optimize Akamai and Cloudflare WAF policies (managed & custom rules, rate limiting, geo/IP/ASN controls, mTLS, headers).
• Manage bot management controls (scoring, allowlists, challenges/JS, behavioral features where available).
• Implement policies for OWASP Top 10, API/WAAP protections, and business logic abuse mitigation.
• Balance security vs. latency/caching; measure impacts and roll out changes safely.
Change, Hygiene & Governance
• Execute changes via standard change control (peer review, testing, staged rollout, rollback plans).
• Maintain certificate management, safe DNS/edge updates, and favor policy-as-code approaches where possible.
• Provide platform health/status reporting with recommendations to reduce incident volume and downtime.
Monitoring, Telemetry & Reporting
• Integrate WAF/edge telemetry with SIEM; maintain dashboards for threat trends, false positive rates, coverage, and hygiene.
• Create actionable alerts and runbooks/SOPs to accelerate response and reduce recurrence.
Collaboration & Enablement
• Partner with SOC/IR to enhance playbooks and Dev/App teams to align policies with application behavior.
• Contribute to internal knowledge base and continuous improvement of control efficacy and resiliency.
• Track emerging threats and vendor updates; recommend timely configuration changes and control enhancements.
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What You Need (Required Qualifications)
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering (or related field) or equivalent practical experience.
• 3–6+ years hands-on experience operating in Network Security space for any enterprise environment.
• Must have at least 2 years of hands-on experience with Akamai.
• Demonstrated expertise in policy tuning and incident response for web and API protections (blocking vs. challenge strategies, exception handling, FP reduction).
• Solid grasp of HTTP/S, TLS/PKI, DNS, CDN caching/edge routing, and performance tradeoffs.
• Experience integrating WAF logs into SIEM and building actionable dashboards/alerts.
• Scripting/automation exposure (Terraform, bash, Python, Ansible or PowerShell), comfort with JSON/YAML and regex; API/CLI experience beneficial.
• Strong analytical troubleshooting, communication, and cross-team collaboration skills.
• Willingness to participate in rotational on-call.
Nice to Have (Preferred)
• Certifications: Akamai ACA/ACP, Cloudflare, CISSP, Security+, GIAC (GWAPT/GWEBIH), PCI ISA, AZ 104/AZ 700, AWS SAA/SOAA.
• Familiarity with any of following: Cloudflare, Fastly, Imperva, F5 ASM/Advanced WAF, Azure Front Door, AWS CloudFront + WAF.
• Vendor/platform depth: F5 iRules, Fastly VCL behaviors, or vendor policy DSLs.
• Broader security stack familiarity (e.g., DDoS scrubbing, SIEM/SOAR, CASB/CSPM, vuln management).
• DevSecOps experience including CI/CD integration for edge policy promotion/testing.
• Payments/financial services experience; working knowledge of PCI DSS, NIST CSF, ISO 27001.