Senior Network Engineer: Load Balancing & Firewall Expert

Peraton; Ashburn (VA); On-site; USD 135,000 - 216,000; Full time

Job summary

Peraton seeks an experienced Senior Network Engineer specializing in load balancing and firewall technologies to support enterprise network infrastructure and security operations. As SME in application delivery, traffic management, and network security, you will design, deploy, and optimize load balancers and NGFWs across hybrid environments.

You will lead policy, monitoring, and incident response efforts, ensuring secure, reliable, and high-performing services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and 8 years of experience, a master's degree and 6 years, an associate's degree and 10 years, or a high school diploma/equivalent and 12 years.
• Must be a U.S. Citizen and eligible to obtain DHS CBP clearance.
• Minimum of 5 years of hands-on network engineering experience, including at least 2 years in load balancing or firewall administration.
• Hands-on experience administering and troubleshooting Palo Alto PAN-OS firewalls and F5 BIG-IP LTM or comparable ADC.
• Experience configuring firewall policies, NAT, and centralized management using Palo Alto Panorama.
• Strong understanding of load balancing, application delivery, SSL termination, health monitoring, and HA configurations.
• Solid networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, HTTP/S, DNS, routing, NAT.
• Experience analyzing network traffic and troubleshooting complex connectivity issues.

Responsibilities

• Architect, deploy, and manage enterprise load balancing platforms: F5 BIG-IP, Citrix NetScaler, HAProxy, NGINX, AWS/Azure load balancers.
• Design and maintain NGFW infrastructure focusing on PAN-OS and other vendors like Fortinet, Cisco, or Check Point.
• Develop and enforce firewall rulesets and security policies; configure NAT and zone-based controls.
• Configure Palo Alto Panorama for centralized policy management across deployments.
• Deploy Palo Alto GlobalProtect for remote access and mobile workforce security.
• Manage SSL/TLS certificates and related lifecycles.
• Implement and maintain WAF policies (Palo Alto Prisma Cloud, F5 ASM) against OWASP Top 10.
• Manage PAN-OS templates, device groups, and log forwarding at scale.
• Support high availability architectures (active/active, active/passive) for firewalls and load balancers.
• Integrate security and load balancing with hybrid/multi-cloud environments (AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Perform traffic analysis and packet captures to diagnose issues.
• Lead incident response for outages and security events.
• On-call rotation for 24/7 support; mentor junior engineers.
• Maintain up-to-date topology, runbooks, and change records.

Skills

Load Balancing

Palo Alto PAN-OS

NGFW

F5 BIG-IP

LTM

Web Application Firewall

Network Security

Cloud/Hybrid Environments

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/IT/Cybersecurity/Networking

Master’s degree (preferred)

DoD or DHS clearance (preferred)

Certifications (CCNP/CCIE/Security)

Tools

Palo Alto Panorama

F5 BIG-IP LTM

Citrix ADC NetScaler

NGINX/HAProxy

PCI/DSS/DoD security tooling

Job description

Peraton seeks an experienced Senior Network Engineer specializing in load balancing and firewall technologies to support enterprise network infrastructure and security operations. As SME in application delivery, traffic management, and network security, you will design, deploy, and optimize load balancers and NGFWs across hybrid environments.

You will lead policy, monitoring, and incident response efforts, ensuring secure, reliable, and high-performing services.