WAF Engineering Lead

Willis Towers Watson; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health and Welfare benefits

Paid holidays and PTO

401(k) with company contribution

Job summary

Willis Towers Watson seeks a WAF Engineering Lead to maximize operational performance and maintain a strong security posture for WTW services. You will oversee BAU support, policy and compliance, and drive change activities in a Tier 3 capacity with direct reports.

You will tune WAF policies across multi-cloud environments, lead investigations into web attacks (OWASP Top 10), develop custom WAF rules and mitigations, and guide secure onboarding of internet-facing applications while collaborating

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology strongly preferred, or relevant industry experience.
• Minimum 5 years’ leadership experience (direct reports) in similar role
• Minimum 5 years’ experience in IT or Telecoms industry. Financial Services experience preferred.
• Minimum 5 years’ Azure WAF/Network management experience
• Minimum 5 years’ Network Security experience. Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Firewall/VPN, Cisco would be advantageous.
• Demonstrable experience investigating, analysing and resolving WAF false positives and false negatives.
• Strong experience implementing WAF solutions in Detection mode and transitioning policies to Prevention/Block mode.

Responsibilities

• Perform analysis and tuning of WAF policies to minimise false positives and false negatives while maintaining security posture.
• Design, implement, maintain and optimise WAF policies across multi-cloud environments.
• Lead investigation and mitigation of web application attacks including OWASP Top 10, bot attacks and DDoS.
• Develop and enhance custom WAF rules, managed rule exclusions, rate-limiting policies and bot protection controls.
• Support transition of WAF policies from Detection to Prevention/Block mode with testing and stakeholder engagement.
• Analyse attack patterns, logs and telemetry to identify emerging threats and mitigations.
• Collaborate with application owners and security stakeholders for secure onboarding of internet-facing apps.
• Provide SME for web app security, secure delivery and WAF best practices.
• Provide leadership to Audit & Compliance, Capacity, Lifecycle, Vulnerability and Risk Management Functions.

Skills

Leadership

WAF tuning

Incident response

Multi-cloud

Policy & compliance

Threat mitigation

Terraform

Azure WAF

Security best practices

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/Engineering/IT

Tools

Terraform

Azure Front Door WAF

Azure Application Gateway WAF

Palo Alto Firewall

Cisco Firewall/VPN

Job description

Description

The WAF Engineering Leadrole is intended tomaximise the operational performance of WTW servicesand maintain a strong secure posture. The role is accountable for BAU support of issues, controlling policy & compliance and supporting change activities. This role ensures the technical success of WAF services within the WTW environment in a Tier 3 capacity and management of direct reports.

The Role

• Perform analysis and tuning of WAF policies to minimise false positives and false negatives while maintaining an appropriate security posture.
• Design, implement, maintain and optimise WAF policies across multi-cloud environments.
• Lead the investigation and mitigation of web application attacks, including OWASP Top 10 threats, bot attacks, credential stuffing, scraping, Layer 7 DDoS attacks and other web-based threats.
• Develop, maintain and enhance custom WAF rules, managed rule exclusions, rate-limiting policies and bot protection controls.
• Support transition of WAF policies from Detection mode to Prevention/Block mode through structured analysis, tuning, testing and stakeholder engagement.
• Analyse attack patterns, logs and telemetry to identify emerging threats and implement effective mitigations.
• Work closely with application owners, development teams and security stakeholders to ensure secure onboarding and operation of internet-facing applications.
• Provide subject matter expertise for web application security, secure application delivery and WAF best practices.
• Provide technical leadership toAudit & Compliance, Capacity Management, Lifecycle Management, Vulnerability Managementand Risk ManagementFunctions.
• Provide leadership during major incidents and drive to quick resolutions.
• Provide line management for direct reports
• Point of escalation for areas of accountability
• Coach team members on a proactive basis, raising the team’s overall technical acumen.
• Restore service and complete root cause analysis of all incidents, driving actions to mitigate the root cause and remove risk of reoccurrence.
• Participate on the Technical Design Authority forum
• Implement changes/POCs to the environment in a controlled manner, with implementation and test plans.

Qualifications

The Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology strongly preferred, or relevant industry experience in related field.
• Minimum 5 years’ leadership experience (direct reports) in similar role
• Minimum 5 years’ experience in IT or Telecoms industry. Financial Services experience preferred.
• Minimum 5 years’ Azure WAF/Network management experience
• Minimum 5 years’ Network Security experience. Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Firewall/VPN, Cisco would be advantageous.
• Demonstrable experience investigating, analysing and resolving WAF false positives and false negatives.
• Strong experience implementing WAF solutions in Detection mode and transitioning policies to Prevention/Block mode through appropriate tuning and validation.
• Proven experience developing and maintaining custom WAF rules, rule exclusions, rate limiting controls and attack mitigation policies, rather than solely relying on out-of-the-box managed rules.
• Extensive knowledge of web application attack vectors, including OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Remote Code Execution (RCE), bot attacks, credential stuffing and API abuse.
• Hands-on experience with attack mitigation, threat analysis and creation of bespoke security controls based on observed attack patterns.
• Strong understanding of bot protection technologies, managed rule sets, policy tuning and wider web application security best practices.
• Experience with Azure Front Door WAF and Azure Application Gateway WAF in enterprise-scale environments.
• Experience working across multi-cloud environments and/or vendor-agnostic WAF platforms.
• Experience deploying and managing WAF infrastructure using Terraform or other Infrastructure as Code (IaC) technologies.
• Experience supporting large-scale production environments with responsibility for change implementation, incident response and threat mitigation.
• Ability to blend creativity, problem solving, and technical skills for refining existing concepts or developing new approaches.
• Ability to enable changes in the business processes and ability to work cooperatively with stakeholders and peers is essential.
• Ability to work under pressure and to resolve issues effectively.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.

Note: Employment-based non-immigrant visa sponsorship and/or assistance is not offered for this specific job opportunity.

Compensation and Benefits

Base salary range and benefits information for this position are being included in accordance with requirements of various state/local pay transparency legislation. Please note that salaries may vary for different individuals in the same role based on several factors, including but not limited to location of the role, individual competencies, education/professional certifications, qualifications/experience, performance in the role and potential for revenue generation (Producer roles only).

Compensation

The base salary compensation range being offered for this role is $120,000.00-$160,000.00 USD annually. This role is also eligible for an annual short-term incentive bonus.

Company Benefits

WTW provides a competitive benefit package which includes the following (eligibility requirements apply):

• Health and Welfare: mental health/emotional wellbeing (including Employee Assistance Program), medical (including prescription drug coverage and fertility benefits), dental, vision, Health Savings Account, Commuter Accounts, Health Care and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts, company-paid life insurance, supplemental life insurance, AD&D, group accident, group critical illness, group legal, identity theft protection, wellbeing program, adoption assistance, surrogacy assistance, auto/home insurance, pet insurance, and other work/life resources.
• Leave Benefits: Paid Holidays, Annual Paid Time Off (includes state/local paid leave where required), Short-Term Disability, Long-Term Disability, Other Leaves (e.g., Bereavement, FMLA, ADA, Jury Duty, Military Leave, and Parental and Adoption Leave), Paid Time Off (only included for Washington roles)
• Retirement Benefits: Qualified contributory pension plan (if eligible) and 401(k) plan with annual nonelective company contribution. Non-qualified retirement plans available to senior level colleagues who satisfy the plans’ eligibility requirements.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

This position will remain posted for a minimum of three business days from the date posted or until sufficient/appropriate candidate slate has been identified.

EOE, including disability/vets