Position: AI Engineer with Akamai (OR) Akamai Security Engineer
Location: NYC, NY or Alpharetta, GA – on site 3 days a week
Duration: Long term
Please find the JD below:
WAF / Akamai Security Engineer
1. WAF Onboarding & Application Migration
· Lead onboarding of internet-facing applications to Akamai WAF.
· Work with application, DNS, load balancer, proxy, firewall, and QA teams to migrate applications into monitor/alert mode and ultimately deny mode.
· Coordinate testing, rollout plans, traffic cutovers, validation, and rollback procedures.
2. WAF Policy Tuning & False Positive Analysis
· Analyze production traffic and WAF events to identify false positives.
· Tune security policies to reduce business impact while maintaining strong protection.
· Review blocked requests, investigate application behavior, and create narrowly scoped exceptions when justified.
3. AI, LLM & API Security Support
· Troubleshoot AI- and LLM-related traffic that triggers WAF protections, such as SQL injection controls.
· Work with application teams and vendors to design compensating controls, header-based attestation mechanisms, and API-specific protections.
· Evaluate emerging Akamai AI security capabilities, including AI-powered detections, Firewall for AI, bot identification, and agentic AI protections.
4. Security Event Monitoring & Threat Analysis
· Review WAF, Bot Manager, DDoS, Client Reputation, and API Security events.
· Analyze attack patterns and determine whether activity is malicious or legitimate.
· Recommend policy improvements and mitigations based on observed threats.
5. Quarterly Security Reviews & Platform Upgrades
· Conduct structured reviews of applications protected by Akamai.
· Evaluate opportunities to move applications from monitoring to mitigation mode.
· Perform quarterly WAF upgrades, policy reviews, and security-control tuning to keep protections aligned with current threat intelligence.
6. Incident Response & Troubleshooting
· Assist with production incidents where application behavior changes after WAF enablement.
· Investigate latency issues, traffic-routing problems, load-balancer interactions, client IP handling, surge queue events, and application outages.
· Coordinate with Akamai engineering resources and internal teams to identify root causes and corrective actions.
7. Security Architecture & Design Consulting
· Advise application teams on secure web architectures, OWASP protections, API security, bot mitigation, client reputation controls, and DDoS protection.
· Provide guidance on best practices for onboarding, secure application design, and remediation of web vulnerabilities.
8. Program Management & Stakeholder Engagement
· Partner with application owners, infrastructure teams, auditors, risk managers, and security leadership.
· Track onboarding progress, risks, dependencies, and remediation activities through program governance and ticketing systems.
· Present status updates, metrics, risks, and remediation plans to senior management.
9. Operational Metrics & Reporting
· Produce dashboards and reporting covering:
o WAF adoption
o Deny-mode coverage
o Bot mitigation effectiveness
o API discovery
o Security exceptions
o Attack activity
· Measure onboarding progress, control effectiveness, and risk reduction across the organization.
10. Vendor Liaison & Technology Roadmap Guidance
· Act as the primary interface between the enterprise and Akamai.
· Engage Akamai product teams on product defects, enhancement requests, AI roadmap discussions, policy recommendations, and complex troubleshooting.
· Evaluate new Akamai capabilities and coordinate pilot deployments where appropriate.
Mandatory Experience
· 5+ years of Akamai experience
· Akamai Kona Site Defender
· Akamai Bot Manager
· Akamai API Security
· OWASP Top 10
· Incident response experience
Preferred Experience
· AI/LLM security
· Akamai Firewall for AI
· Enterprise-scale migration experience
· Financial services experience
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