Network Security Engineer Master

GovCIO LLC is seeking a Network Security Engineer to lead the design, operation, troubleshooting, and continuous improvement of enterprise network security infrastructure. This fully remote role is based in the United States and centers on Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall capabilities alongside Panorama management, high availability operations, enterprise switching, and advanced logging and security-event correlation.

The role involves owning critical network security components end to end, including centralized firewall administration, zero-trust style security policy governance, segmentation and microsegmentation strategies, and deep troubleshooting across firewall and switching layers. You will also support incident investigations with telemetry from Cortex XSIAM and Strata Logging Service, while partnering with SOC teams to improve visibility and response procedures.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, deployment, administration, and lifecycle management of Palo Alto Networks NGFW environments running PAN-OS.
• Own centralized firewall management using Palo Alto Panorama, including device groups, templates, template stacks, policy inheritance, upgrades, configuration backups, log monitoring, and firewall onboarding.
• Design and govern security policies using zero-trust, least-privilege, application-aware, and risk-based principles.
• Configure and troubleshoot security zones, NAT, virtual routers, static and dynamic routing, IPsec VPN, GlobalProtect, decryption, URL Filtering, Threat Prevention, WildFire, DNS Security, and App-ID policies.
• Lead enterprise network segmentation and microsegmentation initiatives using security zones, VLANs, subinterfaces, virtual routers, routing controls, and application-based security policies.
• Develop secure traffic controls for communications among users, servers, applications, management networks, guest networks, and IoT/OT devices, as well as data-center workloads and cloud resources.
• Architect, configure, test, and troubleshoot Palo Alto High Availability deployments, including Active/Passive and Active/Active designs.
• Resolve complex HA failures involving HA1 control link issues, HA2 session/state synchronization problems, HA3 packet forwarding failures, peer communications, configuration synchronization, monitoring failures, split-brain prevention, and failover recovery.
• Plan and execute HA failover testing, PAN-OS upgrades, disaster-recovery exercises, and maintenance procedures while minimizing service impact.
• Troubleshoot HA infrastructure dependencies, including cables, transceivers, switch ports, port channels, VLANs, routing, MTU, latency, packet loss, and redundant-path failures.
• Lead configuration, support, and troubleshooting of Cisco Catalyst and Nexus switching environments.
• Design and support VLANs, trunking, STP/RSTP/MST, EtherChannel/port channels, HSRP/VRRP, Layer 2/Layer 3 switching, ACLs, QoS, switch security, routing, and access-control technologies.
• Diagnose complex connectivity and performance issues using firewall logs, session inspection, packet captures, CLI diagnostics, switch counters, flow data, and network-monitoring platforms.
• Analyze TCP/IP behavior, including handshake failures, SYN/SYN-ACK/ACK flow, retransmissions, resets, timeouts, asymmetric routing, MTU/MSS issues, fragmentation, latency, packet loss, and NAT translation problems.
• Verify packet flow across firewall policy, App-ID, routing, NAT, decryption, threat prevention, VPN, switching, and server/application layers.
• Monitor firewall management-plane and dataplane health, including CPU, memory, session capacity, packet buffers, throughput, logging, and interface performance.
• Integrate Palo Alto NGFWs and Panorama with Strata Logging Service and Cortex XSIAM.
• Ensure reliable firewall log forwarding, cloud logging, log ingestion, data normalization, event availability, retention, and telemetry quality.
• Use Cortex XSIAM and XQL Search to investigate, correlate, and respond to firewall, endpoint, identity, cloud, and third-party security events.
• Partner with SOC teams to tune detections, investigate alerts, develop response procedures, improve visibility, and support incident containment and remediation.
• Lead root-cause analyses for major network or security incidents and deliver corrective and preventive action plans.
• Develop and maintain network diagrams, firewall-policy documentation, HA designs, runbooks, change plans, architecture standards, and operational procedures.
• Mentor junior engineers and provide technical leadership during projects, production incidents, and security reviews.

Required Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Cybersecurity, Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (three additional years if Bachelor’s degree); equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in network engineering, network security, firewall administration, or security infrastructure operations.
• 6+ years of hands-on Palo Alto Networks firewall experience in a production enterprise environment.
• Advanced operational experience with Palo Alto Panorama, including multi-device policy management, templates, device groups, upgrades, configuration management, and troubleshooting.
• Strong hands-on experience designing, maintaining, and troubleshooting Palo Alto High Availability environments.
• Advanced understanding of HA1, HA2, HA3, configuration synchronization, session synchronization, failover behavior, link monitoring, path monitoring, peer health, and recovery processes.
• Strong expertise in TCP/IP, IPv4/IPv6, DNS, DHCP, ARP, routing, NAT, VPNs, and packet-level troubleshooting.
• Demonstrated ability to investigate TCP handshakes, resets, retransmissions, MTU/MSS issues, asymmetric routing, connection timeouts, and firewall session behavior.
• Extensive experience with Cisco Catalyst and/or Cisco Nexus switching technologies.
• Strong knowledge of enterprise switching and routing, including VLANs, trunking, STP/RSTP/MST, EtherChannel, HSRP/VRRP, routing protocols, ACLs, QoS, and switch-security controls.
• Proven experience designing or implementing network segmentation and microsegmentation solutions.
• Working knowledge of Cortex XSIAM, Strata Logging Service, security-event correlation, alert investigation, XQL Search, and firewall log ingestion.
• Ability to lead technical design discussions, independently manage complex workstreams, and communicate risks and recommendations to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Strong documentation, change-management, incident-management, and root-cause-analysis skills.
• Clearance Required: Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance.

Technologies

• Palo Alto Networks, PAN-OS, Palo Alto Panorama, HA1, HA2, HA3
• Cisco Catalyst, Cisco Nexus, GlobalProtect, IPsec VPN
• Cortex XSIAM, Strata Logging Service, XQL Search, WildFire, App-ID, URL Filtering, Threat Prevention, DNS Security, NAT
• STP, RSTP, MST, EtherChannel, HSRP, VRRP, VLANs, QoS, MTU, MSS
• Python, Ansible, Terraform, REST APIs
• Prisma Access, Prisma Cloud, Cortex XDR, Cortex XSOAR
• Cisco ISE, Cisco ACI, SD-Access
• Fortinet Security Fabric, FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer
• AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR, vulnerability-management, NDR, network-monitoring, ticketing platforms

Compensation and Location

• Salary: USD 125,000 - 150,000 per year
• Location: Fully remote in the United States