Senior Firewall Engineer — DoD & Palo Alto Expert

Novul Solutions; Alexandria (VA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

10 PTO days and 5 floating days

11 holidays

401(k) with 3% match

Health insurance

Performance bonuses

Job summary

Novul Solutions is seeking an experienced Firewall Engineer to support mission-critical network security operations in a high-tempo DoD environment. The role emphasizes Palo Alto administration, load balancer security, and rule-set optimization.

The ideal candidate will have 8+ years in Cisco and Palo Alto firewall work, TS/SCI eligibility, and a DoD 8570 IAT II baseline certification. This is a demanding role requiring security-focused, detail-oriented performance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and 8+ years of directly relevant experience; additional experience may be considered in lieu of degree.
• 5+ years of hands-on Cisco and Palo Alto firewall experience in engineering and operations/maintenance roles.
• Experience supporting high operational tempo, Top Secret DoD environments.
• Ability to obtain and maintain TS/SCI eligibility.
• Willingness to take and maintain a CI Polygraph.
• Active DoD 8570 IAT Level II Baseline Certification, such as Security+ CE, CySA+, CCNA Security, GSEC, CND, SSCP, or equivalent.
• Strong Palo Alto experience, including Panorama installation, HA configuration, templates/template stacks, policy creation and push verification, route configuration, IPSec site-to-site VPN troubleshooting, Palo Alto VM in AWS, IPS configuration, virtual routers/systems, and firewall HA.

Responsibilities

• Identify and remediate firewall/load balancer misconfigurations, conflicting rules, security gaps, and performance issues.
• Optimize firewall rule-sets to improve enterprise firewall and load balancer security posture and performance.
• Provide Tier 3 technical support to network operations and network administration teams.
• Maintain hardware and software components at vendor-supported levels.
• Support mission-critical Continuity of Operations initiatives.
• Conduct at least two monthly firewall assessments across CESO and customer devices, including reports and improvement recommendations.
• Support monthly network device performance and traffic utilization reporting.
• Develop and/or contribute to After Action Reports.
• Provide expert guidance on Palo Alto management, operations, architecture, optimization, technology roadmaps, and design discussions within the DISA CESO environment.
• Evaluate DISA CESO technologies and processes, provide future cybersecurity operations recommendations, participate in DISA CESO/mission partner working groups, and ensure compliance with DoD STIGs, DISA orders, JSIG policies, and applicable regulations.

Skills

Firewall engineering

Palo Alto expertise

Cisco firewall operations

Policy creation and push verification

Threat and security assessments

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

Panorama

AWS Palo Alto VM

Job description

Novul Solutions is seeking an experienced Firewall Engineer to support mission-critical network security operations in a high-tempo DoD environment. The role emphasizes Palo Alto administration, load balancer security, and rule-set optimization.

The ideal candidate will have 8+ years in Cisco and Palo Alto firewall work, TS/SCI eligibility, and a DoD 8570 IAT II baseline certification. This is a demanding role requiring security-focused, detail-oriented performance.