Firewall Operations Engineer with Security Clearance

SkyePoint Decisions is seeking a Firewall Engineer to support a Department of State (DoS) Bureau of Diplomatic Technology (DT) program. This program provides transparent, interconnected systems and security supporting the DoS in successfully carrying out its U.S. foreign policy mission. DT provides enterprise architecture design, engineering, operations and maintenance support services for servers, networks, firewalls, and enterprise applications across the Department.
This is a firewall engineer position provides general Tier 2 monitoring, configuration, and support to multiple firewalls and perimeter security systems. The position directly supports DoS on-site to provide perimeter security protection to over 80,000 customers globally. This is a hybrid position based out of Beltsville, MD with 3 days on-site. Shift is Day’s (7:00am-3:30pm), Tuesday-Saturday after training. During the 6-8-week training period, it will be 5 days on-site Mon-Fri (7:00am-3:30pm).

Responsibilities:
Monitor Service Now application for Firewall Operations (FWOPS) incident and service requests.
Implements firewall rules and policies, perform troubleshooting of firewalls (Palo Alto, Cloud Palo Alto, and Forti Gate), CISCO Email Security Appliance (ESA), A10 (load balancer), Proxy platforms, URL filtering across platforms, and analyzing network traffic captures.
Escalates issues as required to Tier 3 staff and monitors issues throughout a problem’s life cycle.
Performs recurring maintenance activities such as device reboots and software upgrades on all devices underneath the Firewall Operations Team.
Records and reports on firewall operations, utilization, and maintenance.
Collaborate across Bureaus and Agencies to implement and repair network changes as they relate to perimeter security devices.
Support Diplomatic Security Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) by implementing block requests for IP’s, Websites, and Email addresses.
Update architecture diagrams using Visio.
Monitor and perform health checks on multiple perimeter security devices.
Draft, coordinate and publish outage notifications as required.
Update shift logs and provide reports to leadership as needed.
Maintain standard operating procedures (SOP), work instructions, and other working documents.
Attend calls requiring a FWOPS team to attend, to include troubleshooting calls.

Required Qualifications:

BA degree and 2-4 years of experience, may accept additional experience in lieu of degree.
In Depth experience using Palo Alto Firewalls and Panorama monitoring tools to troubleshoot and configure a Firewall infrastructure. Strong understanding of networking, proxy, and packet filtering technologies.
Minimum 3-5 years of IT Customer Support experience (Tier I and/or Tier II).
First-hand experience with supporting the monitoring and configuration of Firewall/DMZ infrastructure including Network and Application Firewall Packet Filtering technologies (Palo Alto, Palo Alto virtual FW (cloud), Forti Gate, Azure Firewall, Cloudflare, Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESA), A10 (Load Balancer), and proxy devices.
CLI experience preferred.
Experienced in utilizing network monitoring tools such as Neural Star.
Experienced with TCP/IP network implementation and troubleshooting.
Must be a U.S. Citizen.
An Interim Secret clearance is required to start work and requires eligibility to obtain a Top-Secret clearance.