Principal Network Engineer – Network & Security Patching (Banking Domain)

Role Summary

Patch Management

• Own the patch management lifecycle for firewalls, WAF, IPS, routers, switches, VPN devices, and related network security appliances.
• Perform scheduled upgrades, patches, hotfixes, and firmware updates according to vendor advisories and internal policies.
• Maintain inventory, patch status, security baseline compliance, vulnerability timelines, and audit requirements.
• Test changes in non-production environments and validate stability before production deployment.

Risk and Change Governance

• Perform pre-change risk and impact assessments, dependency mapping, and business impact evaluations.
• Follow formal Change Advisory Board processes with approvals, documentation, rollback plans, and contingency planning.
• Ensure adherence to Central Bank requirements, PCI-DSS, security standards, audit controls, and risk governance frameworks.

Stakeholder Communication

• Communicate patch schedules, risks, expected service impacts, and maintenance updates to technical teams, business stakeholders, and management.
• Coordinate with application owners, infrastructure teams, security teams, and vendors for seamless implementation.
• Provide post-implementation reporting and translate technical risk into business-friendly communication.

Operational Support

• Provide L2/L3 incident troubleshooting, critical outage handling, escalation support, and root cause analysis participation.
• Support firewalls, WAF, IPS, VPN, routing, and switching environments during business-as-usual operations.
• Work with SOC, NOC, and operational teams to maintain service availability.

Governance and Improvement

• Maintain audit-ready records for patching activities, approvals, and implementation outcomes.
• Support internal and external audits with evidence of patch compliance and change controls.
• Identify improvements in patch automation, deployment cycles, risk mitigation, standard operating procedures, and best practices.

Working Conditions

• Most patching is performed during approved after-hours and weekend maintenance windows to minimize business impact.
• The role includes on-call support during critical patching or incident scenarios.

Required Qualifications

• 4–7 years of enterprise network and security engineering experience, with banking experience identified as important to the role.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related discipline.
• At least one of CCNP, CCIE, or CISSP is required; NSE, PCNSE, or ITIL is preferred.