Network Security Engineer - F5

About the Role

Responsibilities

• ● The L3 Network Security Support Engineer is the highest technical escalation point for the bank's perimeter and application-security infrastructure - F5 BIG-IP (LTM load balancing and ASM/Advanced WAF), Intrusion Prevention/Detection systems (Cisco Firepower/FTD), and Next-Generation Firewalls (Palo Alto and Check Point).
• ● The role owns complex troubleshooting and root-cause analysis, design and change implementation, performance and capacity management, security policy tuning, and audit/regulatory compliance, ensuring the availability, performance and security of business-critical and customer-facing banking services.
• ● Provide L3 support for F5 BIG-IP LTM - virtual servers, pools, health monitors, SSL offload, persistence and iRules - for business-critical and customer-facing applications.
• ● Administer and tune F5 ASM / Advanced WAF - create, tune and enforce WAF policies aligned to OWASP Top 10, manage attack signatures, bot defence, and false-positive reduction, and transition policies from monitoring to blocking mode safely.
• ● Manage SSL/TLS certificates, cipher/hardening standards, and PKI integration on the F5 estate.
• ● Troubleshoot latency, performance and availability issues; monitor interface/throughput utilisation; and provide capacity, upgrade and HA-design input.
• ● Provide L3 support for the IPS/IDS platform (Cisco Firepower / FTD via FMC) - policy and signature management, tuning, and threat analysis.
• ● Optimise IPS/IDS policies, reduce false positives, and manage inline vs detection modes; validate coverage of critical assets and segments.
• ● Perform packet-level analysis and threat investigation; correlate IPS/IDS events with the SIEM for detection and response.
• ● Maintain signature/rule currency and coordinate tuning with the SOC and threat-intelligence functions.
• ● Provide L3 support for Palo Alto (PAN-OS /Panorama) and Check Point (Gaia / SmartConsole / MDS) firewalls across production and DR.
• ● Manage security policies, rule bases, NAT, App-ID/URL filtering, threat-prevention profiles, and site-to-site / remote-access VPNs (IPsec/SSL).
• ● Perform firewall hardening, HA configuration, version/patch management (N-2 compliance), and periodic rule recertification / clean-up of no-hit rules.
• ● Lead complex firewall change implementation and troubleshooting with minimal business impact.
• ● Act as the senior escalation point for P1/P2 incidents; lead root-cause analysis and problem management to prevent recurrence.
• ● Own change management (raise, review and implement CRs) in line with the bank's governance, and contribute to design / Low-Level Design (LLD) for new solutions.
• ● Support audit and regulatory compliance (e.g. SAMA / CBUAE, PCI-DSS), remediate findings, and maintain configuration backups (SolarWinds NCM) and evidence.
• ● Maintain SOPs, runbooks and topology documentation; mentor L1/L2 engineers; and coordinate with OEM/vendor TAC for escalations.
• ● Deep hands-on expertise with F5 BIG-IP - LTM and ASM/Advanced WAF, iRules, SSL/TLS.
• ● Strong expertise in IPS/IDS - Cisco Firepower/ FTD / FMC (signature tuning, policy, analysis).
• ● Strong expertise in NGFW - Palo Alto (PAN-OS/Panorama) and Check Point (R8x/Gaia).
• ● Solid networking foundation - TCP/IP, routing/switching, NAT, VPN (IPsec/SSL), DNS, and load-balancing concepts.
• ● SSL/TLS, PKI/certificate management, and security hardening standards.
• ● SIEM integration and log analysis; packet capture and analysis (Wireshark / tcpdump).
• ● Scripting/automation (Python / Bash / API) desirable for operational efficiency.
• ● F5 Certified - 201/301 (LTM) and ASM/Advanced WAF.
• ● Cisco CCNP Security / Firepower (SNCF).
• ● Palo Alto PCNSE.
• ● Check Point CCSA/ CCSE.
• ● CISSP / CISM desirable.

Requirements

• ● Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology or related field.
• ● 8+ years' experience in network/security engineering, with 3+ years at L3 level supporting F5, IPS/IDS and NGFW.
• ● Prior experience in a bank or large regulated enterprise, supporting business-critical and customer-facing services, strongly preferred.
• ● Strong incident-leadership and problem-solving under pressure (P1 handling).
• ● Clear written and verbal communication, including stakeholder and leadership updates.
• ● Disciplined approach to change management, documentation and audit.
• ● Collaborative team player able to mentor junior engineers and coordinate with vendors.
• ● Banking
• ● Financial Services
• ● Insurance (BFSI)
• ● Large Enterprise Security Operations Environment
• ● Full-time onsite deployment at customer location
• ● Willingness to support after-hours activities during critical incidents or planned maintenance
• ● Participation in on-call support rotation if required