Firewall Engineer II chez CryoLife

Position Overview: A Firewall Engineer II is a mid-level cybersecurity professional responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining an organization's network security, with a special focus on firewall infrastructure. This role involves more complex duties than a junior position, requiring experience in analyzing security events, troubleshooting advanced issues, and contributing to security strategy under the guidance of senior engineers. 

Technical duties

• Firewall administration:Design, configure, and manage next-generation firewalls, including policy rulebases, network address translation (NAT), and secure virtual private network (VPN) tunnels.
• Threat analysis:Conduct advanced security event detection and threat analysis by monitoring firewall logs and alerts for suspicious activity.
• Troubleshooting:Provide Tier II support and perform root cause analysis for firewall-related incidents, connectivity issues, and performance problems.
• Network security:Implement and administer other perimeter security solutions, including intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS), web application firewalls (WAFs), and load balancers.
• Upgrades and patching:Plan, coordinate, and execute upgrades, patches, and code updates for network security devices. 

Documentation and compliance

• Documentation:Develop and maintain detailed network security documentation, standard operating procedures, and runbooks.
• Compliance:Ensure the firewall and network security configurations comply with internal and external policies, industry best practices, and regulatory requirements (e.g., NIST, PCI, HIPAA).
• Change management:Adhere to established change control policies, ensuring all changes to the network infrastructure are properly documented, approved, and tracked. 

Security posture enhancement

• Reduced attack surface: Decrease the number of successful intrusion attempts by a specific percentage (e.g., 20%) through the implementation of new security measures.
• Improved readiness: Achieve a high score (e.g., 95% or higher) in an external cybersecurity readiness assessment.
• Policy optimization: Conduct a quarterly review and audit of all firewall rules and successfully remove or decommission a specific number of outdated or unnecessary rules to reduce complexity and minimize risk. 

Incident response and threat mitigation

• Faster detection: Reduce the Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) cybersecurity incidents by a specific percentage (e.g., 30%) by deploying enhanced monitoring and detection mechanisms.
• Quicker resolution: Decrease the Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) to cybersecurity incidents by a specific percentage (e.g., 40%) through streamlined incident response workflows.
• Prompt alerts: Configure and validate a new alerting system that provides instant notifications for anomalous network events, enabling a quicker response. 

Operational efficiency and performance

• Improved network performance: Optimize firewall and security policies to improve network throughput and reduce latency, leading to quantifiable performance improvements. For example, reduce application latency by 15% by fine-tuning firewall inspection settings.
• Proactive issue resolution: Implement a new monitoring system to detect and address firewall issues proactively, reducing the number of critical firewall incidents by a specific percentage.
• Resource optimization: Reduce bandwidth misuse and improve bandwidth availability for critical business activities through better monitoring and policy enforcement. 

Infrastructure management and documentation

• Standardized documentation: Create and maintain up-to-date documentation for all firewall policies, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and network diagrams, making resources accessible to the rest of the team.
• Successful upgrades: Plan, test, and execute the upgrade of all network firewalls to the latest firmware version, completing the project without any unplanned downtime.
• Compliance readiness: Successfully complete a firewall compliance audit, ensuring all devices and policies adhere to regulatory standards and internal security guidelines. 

Leadership and mentorship

• Knowledge sharing: Develop and lead training sessions for junior engineers on advanced firewall configurations and troubleshooting, resulting in a measurable improvement in their ability to resolve issues.
• Enhanced team skills: Mentor a new team member and successfully onboard them, resulting in their ability to handle standard firewall change requests independently within three months.

Streamlined processes:

• Develop and implement a new, automated process for firewall change management, reducing the average time to fulfill a standard request by 50%. 

Willingness to provide after-hours project work and support (as required)

Qualifications:

Experience

• Typically requires 2–5 years of experience in network security or a related IT field.
• Significant hands-on experience with major firewall platforms, such as Palo Alto Networks (including Panorama), Cisco ASA, Fortinet, or Check Point. 

Technical skills

• Strong understanding of core networking concepts, including TCP/IP, routing protocols (e.g., BGP, OSPF), IP Subnetting, and VLANs.
• Proficiency with security tools and technologies such as VPN, IDS/IPS, network monitoring, and security information and event management (SIEM) systems.
• Experience with cloud security principles in environments like AWS or Azure is highly desirable. 

Soft skills

• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills to collaborate with technical teams and other business units.