Senior Network and Security Engineer

CNS Middle East; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 250,000 - 420,000; Full time

Job summary

CNS Middle East seeks an experienced Network Security Engineer to design, deploy and hand over complex security and data-centre projects across the UAE. You will lead implementations end-to-end—Next-Gen Firewalls, Zero Trust, NAC, F5 application delivery and Cisco ACI—and act as the technical escalation point for the team.

Role requires 10+ years in enterprise networking with 5+ years delivering security projects. UAE/GCC experience and multiple vendor certifications are highly valued.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Telecom Engineering or IT (or equivalent experience).
• CCNP Security or CCNP Enterprise / Data Center; PCNSE; Fortinet NSE 7 / FCSS; F5 Certified Technology Specialist (301/302/303).
• Minimum 10 years in enterprise networking, including 5+ years delivering network security projects.

Responsibilities

• Design and architecture: gather customer requirements and produce HLD/LLD for security and data-centre solutions.
• Deployment and migration: lead end-to-end deployments and firewall/load-balancer migrations with minimal downtime.
• Operations and support: L3 escalation for incidents; meet SLA targets and manage maintenance windows.

Skills

Next-Gen Firewall

ZTNA / SASE

NAC / ISE

F5 BIG-IP

Cisco ACI

Routing Protocols

SD-WAN

Fortinet Security Fabric

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering/IT

CCNP Security

CCNP Enterprise / Data Center

PCNSE

Fortinet NSE 7

F5 Certified Technology Specialist

Tools

Palo Alto

FortiGate

Cisco FTD/FMC

FortiManager

FortiAnalyzer

FortiEMS

FortiZTP

FortiSandbox

FortiADC

FortiMail

F5 BIG-IP

Cisco ACI

Nexus 9000

ISE

Aci

Job description

CNS is a technology company that powers the future by providing digital solutions essential to support all enterprise and human development. While growing and managing a robust pool of supplier-partners for the benefit of our clients has always been a priority, we are constantly re-inventing ourselves.

Founded in 1987 with more than 35 years of experience, CNS employs over 320 employees including more than 250 certified engineers. We offer in-depth expertise and a range of best-in-class products that support the digital transformation of all major industries. With offices in three countries, we have an extensive reach into, and regional knowledge of the Middle East markets.

A shift into levering our many years of experience to develop pioneering software in-house will add yet another dimension to our highly innovative solutions-portfolio.

Job Description

Design, deploy and hand over enterprise security and data-centre projects for CNS customers across the UAE. The role is hands-on: the engineer leads implementations end to end - Next-Gen Firewalls, Zero Trust, NAC, F5 application delivery and Cisco ACI - and acts as the technical escalation point for the team.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

Design and architecture

• Gather customer requirements and produce High-Level Design (HLD) and Low-Level Design (LLD) documents for security and data-centre solutions.
• Design segmentation, firewall policy, Zero Trust access and NAC policy models aligned with customer security standards.
• Review existing customer environments and recommend hardening, migration and consolidation paths.

Deployment and migration

• Lead end-to-end deployments: staging, configuration, integration, cut-over and post-go-live support.
• Plan and execute firewall and load-balancer migrations (policy conversion, rule clean-up, rollback plans) with minimal downtime.
• Integrate security platforms with AD/LDAP, RADIUS/TACACS+, PKI, SIEM and SOAR.
• Write and run User Acceptance Test (UAT) plans and deliver as-built documentation and knowledge transfer to customers.

Operations and support

• Act as L3 escalation for network and security incidents; lead root-cause analysis for major incidents.
• Carry out preventive maintenance (PM) health checks, firmware upgrades and vulnerability remediation within agreed maintenance windows.
• Meet SLA targets on assigned tickets and keep ticketing tools up to date.

Team and customer delivery

• Support pre-sales with solution sizing, BoQ review, SOW and RFP technical responses.
• Present technical status to customer stakeholders and internal management.

Qualifications

Education

Minimum

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Telecom Engineering or IT (or equivalent experience).
• At least one of: CCNP Security or CCNP Enterprise / Data Center; PCNSE; Fortinet NSE 7 / FCSS; F5 Certified Technology Specialist (301/302/303).

Desired

• CCIE Security / Data Center / Enterprise.
• Cisco ISE or ACI specialist certification.

Experience

Minimum

• Minimum 10 years in enterprise networking, including 5+ years delivering network security projects.

Desired

• System integrator or managed-services experience in the UAE/GCC.
• Hands-on delivery of multi-vendor firewall and F5 migrations.

Additional Information

Skills & Abilities

Minimum

• Next-Gen Firewall - Palo Alto, FortiGate, Cisco FTD/FMC: HA deployments, policy migration, IPS, URL filtering, SSL decryption, VPN.
• Fortinet Security Fabric - FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, FortiEMS, FortiZTP, FortiSandbox, FortiADC, FortiMail.
• Zero Trust / ZTNA / SASE - ZTNA rollouts replacing legacy VPN; IdP integration (Entra ID, Okta) and MFA.
• Network Access Control - Cisco ISE, Aruba ClearPass, FortiNAC: 802.1X, MAB, guest/BYOD, posture, profiling, TrustSec.
• Application delivery - F5 BIG-IP LTM, GTM, Advanced WAF, APM; F5OS / rSeries / VELOS.
• Data-centre fabric - Cisco ACI (APIC), Nexus 9000: fabric bring-up, tenants/VRF/BD/EPG, L3Out, service graphs.
• Layer 2 / Layer 3 - VLANs, STP, LACP, vPC; BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, VRF, HSRP/VRRP, VXLAN EVPN.
• Zero-touch SD-WAN - Fortinet SD-WAN (FortiZTP + FortiManager) large-scale branch rollouts.

Desired

• Security operations - SIEM (Splunk, QRadar), EDR, vulnerability scanners, CIS hardening.
• Automation - Python, Ansible, REST APIs, Terraform for bulk configuration and policy migration.
• Clear written English for HLD/LLD, method statements, change requests and customer reports.
• Valid UAE driving licence; willing to work maintenance windows and join an on-call rota.

Compliance with policies and procedures based on the ISO standards adopted by CNS.