Firewall Operations Engineer

SAIC; Town of Springfield (WI); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

SAIC is seeking a Firewall Operations Engineer to support a Department of State program. The role covers Tier 2 monitoring, rule implementation, and maintenance for multiple firewalls and perimeter security systems.

It requires hands-on work with Palo Alto, Panorama, FortiGate, and related security technologies to protect 80,000+ users globally. The position is hybrid, involving on-site support at Beltsville, MD or Springfield, VA with ~3 days on-site and a training period.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in IT/CS or related field with 5+ years experience, or Master's with 3+ years (or equivalent).
• In-depth experience with Palo Alto Firewalls and Panorama for troubleshooting and config of Firewall infrastructure.
• 3–5 years IT customer support experience (Tier I/II).
• Hands-on experience with Firewall/DMZ infrastructure including TCP/IP, proxies, packet filtering.
• CLI experience preferred.
• Experience with NeuralStar and network monitoring tools.

Responsibilities

• Provide Tier 2 monitoring, management, and troubleshooting for perimeter devices (firewalls, proxies, mail security).
• Monitor ServiceNow for firewall operations incidents and requests.
• Implement firewall rules/policies and perform device upgrades and maintenance.
• Escalate issues to Tier 3 and track lifecycle until resolution.
• Maintain SOPs, shift logs, and architecture diagrams in Visio.
• Collaborate across bureaus to implement network changes affecting perimeter devices.

Skills

Networking fundamentals

Troubleshooting

Tier I/II support

Team coordination

Documentation

Education

Bachelor's degree in IT/CS

Master's degree in IT/CS

Tools

Palo Alto Firewalls

Panorama

Azure Firewall

FortiGate

A10 Load Balancer

Cisco ESA

ServiceNow

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 Sunday-Thursday 11pm-7:30am 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.