Senior Firewall Engineer - Zero Trust & Federal Security

Akumen, Inc.; Camp Springs (MD); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Akumen, Inc. seeks a Senior Cybersecurity Engineer to design, implement, secure, and maintain enterprise firewall infrastructure for mission-critical federal environments.

The role requires hands-on expertise in firewall platforms, Zero Trust, and NIST-based compliance, with responsibility for architecture, policy, hardening, and incident response. The ideal candidate will lead firewall architecture, policy management, and security hardening while coordinating with cloud, infra, and app teams to

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field; relevant experience may substitute for degree.
• 7+ years of experience administering enterprise firewall and network security technologies.
• Hands-on experience with enterprise firewall platforms such as Palo Alto, Cisco Firepower/ASA, Fortinet FortiGate, Check Point, or Juniper SRX.
• Strong understanding of TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, VPNs (IPSec/SSL), NAT, ACLs, DNS, and network protocols.
• Experience implementing network segmentation and Zero Trust security architectures.
• Experience supporting security compliance frameworks such as NIST 800-53, RMF, DISA STIGs, or CIS Benchmarks.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, configure, and maintain enterprise firewall solutions in high-availability production environments.
• Develop, manage, and optimize firewall security policies, ACLs, NAT configurations, VPN tunnels, and network segmentation.
• Perform firewall rule reviews, policy cleanup, and change management while ensuring compliance with security requirements.
• Support implementation of Zero Trust Architecture, micro-segmentation, and secure network access solutions.
• Troubleshoot complex network connectivity and security issues across firewalls, routers, switches, load balancers, and VPN technologies.
• Monitor firewall health, performance, logging, and security events while responding to incidents and vulnerabilities.
• Conduct firewall security assessments, risk analyses, and configuration audits per NIST/agency requirements.
• Collaborate with cloud, infrastructure, and application teams to securely integrate enterprise systems and cloud environments.
• Develop and maintain network diagrams, security documentation, SOPs, and implementation guides.
• Support Authority to Operate (ATO) activities, vulnerability remediation, continuous monitoring, and compliance initiatives.

Skills

Firewall administration

Network security

VPN technologies

Zero Trust

NIST RMF/NIST 800-53

Security compliance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity/CS/IT

Tools

Palo Alto

Cisco Firepower/ASA

Fortinet FortiGate

Check Point

Juniper SRX

Job description

Akumen, Inc. seeks a Senior Cybersecurity Engineer to design, implement, secure, and maintain enterprise firewall infrastructure for mission-critical federal environments.

The role requires hands-on expertise in firewall platforms, Zero Trust, and NIST-based compliance, with responsibility for architecture, policy, hardening, and incident response. The ideal candidate will lead firewall architecture, policy management, and security hardening while coordinating with cloud, infra, and app teams to