Senior cybersecurity engineer – network security, zero trust & automation

Type of Requisition:

Regular

Clearance Level Must Currently Possess:

None

Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain:

None

Public Trust/Other Required:

BI Full 6C (T4)

Job Family:

Cyber and IT Risk Management

Job Qualifications:

Skills:

Cybersecurity, Firewalls, Network Infrastructures, Network Security, Troubleshooting

Certifications:

None

Experience:

7 + years of related experience

US Citizenship Required:

Yes

Job Description:

As a Senior Cybersecurity Engineer supporting the Zero Trust and Security Engineering team, you will provide senior-level technical expertise for the design, implementation, integration, operation, sustainment, and modernization of enterprise cybersecurity platforms supporting a large, complex federal environment.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on engineering for next-generation firewalls, secure remote access, segmentation, and related network-security services.
• Engineer, administer, troubleshoot, optimize, and sustain enterprise firewall technologies. Palo Alto Networks NGFW, PAN-OS, Panorama, Prisma Access, Strata Cloud, or comparable technologies are strongly preferred.
• Manage the firewall policy lifecycle, including rules, objects, NAT, security profiles, recertification, cyber hygiene, optimization, and removal of obsolete or overly permissive policies.
• Lead firewall and security-platform changes, including impact analysis, testing, change control, rollback, validation, and documentation.
• Support Zero Trust and SASE capabilities including ZTNA, Secure Web Gateway, Firewall-as-a-Service, secure remote access, segmentation, device posture, and policy enforcement.
• Troubleshoot complex issues involving routing, NAT, VPN, DNS, authentication, PKI/certificates, TLS/SSL inspection, logging, performance, and high availability.
• Support platform deployments, upgrades, patching, hardening, configuration management, vendor escalation, and platform-specific vulnerability remediation.
• Engineer and support SOAR, security automation, workflow orchestration, and API-based integrations.
• Develop automation for alert enrichment, IOC analysis/blocking, incident triage, ticket creation, containment, remediation, policy changes, and reporting using REST APIs, Python, or comparable technologies.
• Integrate security capabilities and telemetry across SIEM/XDR, endpoint, identity, ITSM, vulnerability management, DLP, NAC, threat intelligence, cloud, and enterprise logging/data platforms.
• Evaluate AI-assisted security operations that improve detection, investigation, response, administration, and analyst workflows while maintaining appropriate human validation and guardrails.
• Support greenfield deployments, migrations, environment separation, coexistence, testing, and transition to operations.
• Collaborate with Security Operations, network engineering, IAM/ICAM, endpoint, NAC, vulnerability management, cloud, and infrastructure teams; serve as a senior technical escalation point as needed.
• Develop architecture diagrams, SOPs, implementation/test plans, runbooks, troubleshooting guides, configuration baselines, and as-built documentation.
• Support security assessments, authorization activities, audits, evidence collection, and compliance requirements.
• Develop and maintain high-quality technical documentation, including architecture and data-flow diagrams, engineering standards, SOPs, implementation plans, test plans, validation procedures, operational runbooks, troubleshooting guides, configuration baselines, and change documentation.
• Ensure security-platform configurations and engineering changes align with applicable organizational cybersecurity policies, technical standards, approved architectures, and change-management requirements.
• May serve as a technical or project lead for assigned initiatives. This position does not require direct personnel-management responsibilities.

In Order to Be Considered

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, IT, Engineering, or related STEM discipline and 10+ years of relevant experience; allowable substitutions may apply per contractual labor-category requirements.

Significant hands-on experience engineering and troubleshooting enterprise next-generation firewalls in complex production environments.

Strong experience with firewall policy lifecycle management, NAT, zones, segmentation, logging, optimization, and change control.

Strong network-engineering fundamentals including TCP/IP, routing, BGP, DNS, DHCP, NAT, VPN, TLS/SSL, PKI/certificates, packet analysis, and high availability.

Experience with Zero Trust/SASE technologies and working knowledge of NIST SP 800-207 or comparable Zero Trust principles.

Working knowledge of SOAR, security automation, APIs, workflow orchestration, and security-platform integration. Python, REST API, JSON, webhooks, or similar experience is strongly preferred.

Experience integrating enterprise security platforms and telemetry is strongly preferred.

Experience with greenfield deployments, migrations, environment separation, or independently managed security environments is strongly preferred.

Palo Alto Networks or comparable enterprise network-security and SASE experience is strongly preferred, with direct Palo Alto experience highly desirable.

Federal, government, or highly regulated enterprise experience is preferred.

Strong analytical, troubleshooting, documentation, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Must be able to support planned maintenance and change windows, including occasional after-hours activities, and provide senior technical support for priority incidents or service-impacting security-platform issues when required.

Must be able to obtain and maintain the required federal suitability determination/background investigation for the position.

Preferred Certifications

Relevant professional certifications in network security, Zero Trust/SASE, cybersecurity architecture, security automation, cloud security, or network engineering are preferred.

The likely salary range for this position is $149,469 - $184,000.

This is not, however, a guarantee of compensation or salary. Rather, salary will be set based on experience, geographic location and possibly contractual requirements and could fall outside of this range.

Scheduled Weekly Hours:

40

Travel Required:

Less than 10%

Telecommuting Options:

Remote

Work Location:

Any Location / Remote

Additional Work Locations:

Total Rewards at GDIT:

Our benefits package for all US-based employees includes a variety of medical plan options, some with Health Savings Accounts, dental plan options, a vision plan, and a 401(k) plan offering the ability to contribute both pre and post-tax dollars up to the IRS annual limits and receive a company match. To encourage work/life balance, GDIT offers employees full flex work weeks where possible and a variety of paid time off plans, including vacation, sick and personal time, holidays, paid parental, military, bereavement and jury duty leave. GDIT typically provides new employees with 15 days of paid leave per calendar year to be used for vacations, personal business, and illness and an additional 10 paid holidays per year. Paid leave and paid holidays are prorated based on the employee’s date of hire. The GDIT Paid Family Leave program provides a total of up to 160 hours of paid leave in a rolling 12 month period for eligible employees. To ensure our employees are able to protect their income, other offerings such as short and long-term disability benefits, life, accidental death and dismemberment, personal accident, critical illness and business travel and accident insurance are provided or available. We regularly review our Total Rewards package to ensure our offerings are competitive and reflect what our employees have told us they value most.

Our Identity Verification Process:

As part of the hiring process, we will ask you to complete an identity verification process that leverages advanced biometrics and artificial intelligence to ensure authenticity and protect against identity fraud. You are expected to be on camera during virtual interviews. We reserve the right to take your picture to verify your identity and prevent fraud. By proceeding, you authorize the collection, processing, and use of your biometric data for identity verification and security purposes.

About Our Work:

We are GDIT. A global technology and professional services company that delivers technology solutions and mission services to every major agency across the U.S. government, defense and intelligence community. Our 26,000 experts extract the power of technology to create immediate value and deliver solutions at the edge of innovation. We operate across 50+ countries worldwide, offering leading mission-ready capabilities in AI, cloud, cyber and software development.

Join our Talent Community to stay up to date on our career opportunities and events at gdit.com/tc.

Equal Opportunity Employer / Individuals with Disabilities / Protected Veterans