What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Network Security Engineer (Palo Alto / Cloudflare) position at VDart, Inc.?
Role: Senior Network Security Engineer (Palo Alto / Cloudflare)
Location: Plano, TX (Hybrid)
Type: Contract
Position Overview
- The customer is seeking a highly experienced Senior Network Security Engineer to support a strategic initiative involving the encryption and decryption optimization of approximately 80 Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) utilizing Palo Alto Networks technology. The engineer will be responsible for implementing Palo Alto recommended best practices and configuration changes while collaborating closely with internal engineering resources.
- This role requires strong expertise in Palo Alto firewall administration, SSL/TLS decryption policies, network security architecture, troubleshooting, and integration with Cloudflare and load balancing environments.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead implementation of Palo Alto recommended changes across approximately 80 NGFW firewalls.
- Design, configure, and optimize SSL/TLS encryption and decryption policies.
- Perform firewall rule analysis, policy tuning, and security hardening.
- Collaborate with engineering teams on architecture, deployment planning, and operational readiness.
- Work alongside Cloudflare and load balancer infrastructure teams to ensure secure and optimized traffic flow.
- Troubleshoot complex networking and security issues involving encrypted traffic inspection.
- Validate firewall performance, stability, and security compliance after implementation changes.
- Develop implementation documentation, operational procedures, and knowledge transfer materials.
- Mentor and support the junior engineer assigned to the project.
- Assist in transition and operational handoff to the designated customer engineer being groomed for long-term ownership.
Required Qualifications
- 7 years of hands-on network security engineering experience.
- Strong expertise with Palo Alto Networks NGFW platforms.
- Deep understanding of SSL/TLS decryption technologies and best practices.
- Experience implementing Palo Alto recommended security architecture and policy changes.
- Hands-on experience with Palo Alto Panorama, Security policies and NAT, Threat Prevention, URL Filtering, SSL Forward Proxy / Inbound Inspection.
- Experience integrating security controls with Cloudflare environments.
- Strong understanding of load balancer technologies and traffic flow concepts.
- Excellent troubleshooting and analytical skills.
- Strong documentation and communication abilities.
Preferred Qualifications
- Palo Alto certifications (PCNSE preferred).
- Experience in large enterprise firewall environments.
- Familiarity with Zero Trust and modern security architectures.
- Experience working in staff augmentation or consulting engagements.