Firewall Operations Engineer

SAIC; Beltsville (MD); Hybrid; USD 95,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

SAIC in Beltsville, MD is seeking a Firewall Operations Engineer to support a Department of State (DoS) program. You will monitor, configure, and troubleshoot perimeter devices including Palo Alto, FortiGate, and related proxies to safeguard DoS networks.

This hybrid role requires on-site work three days per week with training weeks onsite. You will coordinate with incident response, update Visio diagrams, and draft outage notices while maintaining SOPs and shift logs.

Qualifications

• Bachelors and five (5) years or more experience; Masters and three (3) years or more experience; may accept additional experience in lieu of degree.
• In Depth experience using Palo Alto Firewalls and Panorama monitoring tools to troubleshoot and configure a Firewall infrastructure.
• Minimum 3-5 years of IT Customer Support experience (Tier I and/or Tier II).
• Supporting Firewall/DMZ infrastructure including Palo Alto, Palo Alto cloud, FortiGate, Azure Firewall, Cloudflare, Cisco ESA, A10, and proxy devices.
• CLI experience preferred. Experience with NeuralStar is a plus.
• Experienced with TCP/IP network implementation and troubleshooting.

Responsibilities

• Provides Tier 2 support in monitoring, management, and troubleshooting of perimeter devices including firewalls and proxies.
• Monitor Service Now for FWOPS incidents and service requests.
• Implements firewall rules and policies across multiple platforms and performs troubleshooting.
• Escalates issues to Tier 3 and tracks lifecycle until resolution.
• Performs routine maintenance like device reboots and software upgrades.
• Records and reports on firewall operations, utilization, and maintenance.
• Collaborates across Bureaus and Agencies for network changes related to perimeter security.
• Supports CIRT by implementing block requests for IPs, websites, and emails.
• Updates architecture diagrams using Visio and maintains SOPs and logs.

Skills

Palo Alto

Panorama

Firewall Troubleshooting

Network Monitoring

TCP/IP Troubleshooting

CLI Experience

NeuralStar Monitoring

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree preferred

Tools

Panorama

Azure Firewall

Cloud Palo Alto

A10 Load Balancer

Job description

This is an opening for a Firewall Operations Engineer to support a Department of State (DoS) Bureau of Diplomatic Technology (DT) program. This program provides transparent, interconnected systems and security supporting the DoS in successfully carrying out its U.S. foreign policy mission. DT provides enterprise architecture design, engineering, operations and maintenance support services for servers, networks, firewalls, and enterprise applications across the Department.

This position is within the Vanguard 2025 program, providing general Tier 2 monitoring, configuration, and support to multiple firewalls and perimeter security systems. The position directly supports DoS on-site to provide perimeter security protection to over 80,000 customers globally.

This is a hybrid position based out of Beltsville, MD or Springfield, VA and requires approximately 3 days on-site.

Shift is Tuesday - Saturday 1500 -2330 subject to mission priorities. During the ~6-8-week training period, it will be 5 days on-site Mon-Fri (7:00am-3:30pm).

Your responsibilities will include:

• Provides Tier 2 support in the monitoring, management, and troubleshooting of perimeter devices to include firewalls, proxies, and mail transport agents.
• Monitor Service Now application for Firewall Operations (FWOPS) incident and service requests.
• Implements firewall rules and policies, perform troubleshooting of firewalls (Palo Alto, Cloud Palo Alto, and FortiGate), CISCO Email Security Appliance (ESA), A10 (load balancer), Proxy platforms, URL filtering across platforms, and analyzing network traffic captures.
• Escalates issues as required to Tier 3 staff and monitors issues throughout a problem’s life cycle.
• Performs recurring maintenance activities such as device reboots and software upgrades on all devices underneath the Firewall Operations Team.
• Records and reports on firewall operations, utilization, and maintenance.
• Collaborate across Bureaus and Agencies to implement and repair network changes as they relate to perimeter security devices.
• Support Diplomatic Security Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) by implementing block requests for IP’s, Websites, and Email addresses.
• Update architecture diagrams using Visio.
• Monitor and perform health checks on multiple perimeter security devices.
• Draft, coordinate and publish outage notifications as required.
• Update shift logs and provide reports to leadership as needed.
• Maintain standard operating procedures (SOP), work instructions, and other working documents.
• Attend calls requiring a FWOPS team to attend, to include troubleshooting calls.

Required Education & Experience:

• Bachelors and five (5) years or more experience; Masters and three (3) years or more experience; may accept additional experience in lieu of degree.
• In Depth experience using Palo Alto Firewalls and Panorama monitoring tools to troubleshoot and configure a Firewall infrastructure. Strong understanding of networking, proxy, and packet filtering technologies.
• Minimum 3-5 years of IT Customer Support experience (Tier I and/or Tier II).
• First-hand experience with supporting the monitoring and configuration of Firewall/DMZ infrastructure including Network and Application Firewall Packet Filtering technologies (Palo Alto, Palo Alto virtual FW (cloud), FortiGate, Azure Firewall, Cloudflare, Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESA), A10 (Load Balancer), and proxy devices.
• CLI experience preferred.
• Experienced in utilizing network monitoring tools such as NeuralStar.
• Experienced with TCP/IP network implementation and troubleshooting.

Required Clearance:

• US Citizenship.
• Active interim secret clearance with the ability to obtain a top secret clearance.