Firewall Operations Engineer | Secret Clearance

Conceras, LLC; Beltsville (MD); On-site; USD 85,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Conceras, LLC in Beltsville, MD seeks a Network Operations – Firewall Operations Engineer to support a DoS program. Hybrid role with ~3 on-site days, day shift Tue–Sat after training, providing Tier 2 monitoring and configuration for perimeter devices.

The role covers firewall rule implementation for Palo Alto, Panorama, FortiGate, ESA, and proxies; health checks, log reporting, and outage updates. Requires 3–5 years IT support and Palo Alto expertise.

Qualifications

• BA degree and 2–4 years of experience, or additional experience in lieu of degree.
• Experience with Palo Alto Firewalls and Panorama for troubleshooting and configuration.
• 3–5 years IT Customer Support (Tier I/II) experience.

Responsibilities

• Provides Tier 2 support in monitoring, management, and troubleshooting of perimeter devices including firewalls, proxies, and ESA.
• Implements firewall rules and policies for Palo Alto, Palo Alto cloud, FortiGate, and related proxies; analyzes traffic captures.
• Escalates issues to Tier 3, maintains logs, SOPs, and outage communications.
• Performs device maintenance and software upgrades; maintains health checks across perimeter devices.
• Update architecture diagrams using Visio and coordinate network changes with Bureaus/Agencies.

Skills

Palo Alto Firewalls

Panorama monitoring

Networking fundamentals

TCP/IP troubleshooting

CLI experience

Security incident response

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Palo Alto Panorama

FortiGate

Azure Firewall

Cloudflare

Cisco ESA

A10 Load Balancer

Proxy platforms

Job description

Network Operations – Firewall Operations Engineer

Position Description

This is an opening for a Firewall 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 is a firewall engineer position, 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 with ~3 days on-site. Shift is Day’s (7:00am-3:30pm), Tuesday-Saturday after training. 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.
• 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:

• BA degree and 2-4 years of 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.
• An Interim Secret clearance is required to start work and requires eligibility to obtain a Top-Secret clearance.