Principal Cybersecurity Engineer

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, implementation, configuration, and support of Fortinet security platforms, including FortiGate, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer.
• Own enterprise firewall policy lifecycle activities, including rule creation, rule review, rule optimization, NAT, routing, VPN, segmentation, and policy hygiene.
• Lead L3/L4 troubleshooting for complex firewall, VPN, routing, connectivity, application access, certificate, and performance issues.
• Architect and enforce secure network access controls across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud-connected environments.
• Manage Fortinet platform upgrades, firmware lifecycle, patching, HA failover testing, configuration backups, and platform hardening.
• Analyze Fortinet logs, traffic flows, blocked sessions, IPS/IDS alerts, VPN logs, and security events to support incident response and operational troubleshooting.
• Partner with SOC, Network, Cloud, IAM, Infrastructure, and application teams to resolve complex security and connectivity issues.
• Drive firewall rule cleanup, risk reduction, configuration standardization, access control improvements, and least privilege enforcement.
• Review and validate firewall changes to ensure alignment with enterprise security standards, regulatory expectations, and change governance.
• Develop and maintain SOPs, runbooks, security baselines, reference architectures, configuration standards, and operational documentation.
• Lead vendor coordination with Fortinet for escalations, bug fixes, firmware recommendations, technical cases, and advanced feature enablement.
• Mentor junior engineers and provide technical guidance on Fortinet operations, troubleshooting, design, and secure configuration practices.
• Support audit, compliance, and risk management activities by providing firewall evidence, configuration details, rule review outputs, and operational documentation.
• Drive automation opportunities for rule deployment, configuration validation, reporting, and compliance monitoring.

Required Skills & Experience

• 8-12+ years of experience in Network Security, Firewall Engineering, or Cybersecurity Engineering.
• Strong hands-on experience with FortiGate firewalls, including firewall policies, NAT, routing, VPN, HA, UTM/security profiles, IPS, web filtering, application control, and SSL inspection.
• Strong working experience with FortiManager for centralized firewall management, policy deployment, configuration management, and operational governance.
• Strong working experience with FortiAnalyzer for log analysis, reporting, event review, firewall usage analysis, and incident support.
• Strong knowledge of TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, DNS, DHCP, BGP/OSPF basics, IPsec VPN, SSL VPN, segmentation, and secure access controls.
• Experience supporting large enterprise firewall environments with high availability, change governance, and operational stability requirements.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across firewall policy, routing, VPN, packet flow, application access, certificates, and performance issues.
• Good understanding of Zero Trust, SASE, secure remote access, network segmentation, and defense-in-depth security principles.
• Experience working with ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow for incident, change, problem, and request management.
• Strong documentation, analytical, communication, stakeholder management, and leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Fortinet certifications such as NSE 4, NSE 5, NSE 6, or NSE 7.
• CCNP Security, CISSP, or equivalent security/networking certification.
• Experience in healthcare, financial services, or other regulated enterprise environments.
• Exposure to cloud networking and cloud security across Azure or AWS.
• Experience integrating firewall telemetry with SIEM, SOC monitoring, vulnerability management, or security analytics platforms.
• Experience with automation or scripting for firewall operations, configuration validation, compliance checks, or reporting.

What Would Your Work Week Look Like?