Senior Security Administrator - Palo Alto

Overview

Security Administrator

Contract: 6 months

Location: London - hybrid

Inside IR35: Umbrella only

Role overview:

Palo Alto Networks expertise to support and enhance our security operations. Palo Alto Networks provides a comprehensive, AI-powered SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) solution known as Prisma SASE. It is designed to converge networking and security into a single cloud-delivered platform to support hybrid work forces and modern, distributed enterprises. You will be responsible for the administration, configuration, policy management, monitoring, and optimisation of Palo Alto security controls, ensuring secure and resilient network operations across enterprise environments.

This role is hands-on, and you should be comfortable working in complex, regulated, or high-availability environments, partnering with infrastructure, networking, and SOC teams to deliver robust security outcomes.

• Palo Alto Administer, configure, and support Palo Alto NGFWs (PA-Series / VM-Series) including:
• Security policy rules, NAT, zones, routing, interfaces, HA, and objects
• App- / User- / Content-, URL filtering, Anti-Spyware, Vulnerability profiles
• SSL decryption policy management (where applicable) and related operational impacts

• Work closely with Network Engineers, Cloud/Platform teams, and Service Owners
• Support projects such as:
• Firewall migrations, data centre moves, cloud connectivity, segmentation initiatives
• Zero Trust or least privilege initiatives
• Integration with SIEM/SOAR tooling

• Strong hands-on experience administering Palo Alto NGFWs in enterprise environments
• Proven experience with Panorama for centralised policy and device management
• Understanding of:
  • Network security principles (segmentation, least privilege, L3/L4/L7 filtering)
  • TCP/IP, routing (BGP/OSPF helpful), NAT, VPN concepts
• Skilled troubleshooting ability using logs, packet capture, and CLI diagnostics
• Experience operating within ITIL-style change management and incident processes
• Strong documentation skills and ability to communicate clearly to technical/non-technical stakeholders

• Palo Alto feature experience:
  • Global Protect, site-to-site IPsec VPNs, SSL decryption operations
  • Advanced Threat Prevention tuning, Wild Fire analysis, DNS Security
• Cloud security/networking exposure:
  • Azure/AWS/GCP, cloud-native firewalls, transit networking
  • VM-Series deployments, Terraform/automation exposure
• SIEM integration experience:
  • Splunk / Sentinel / QRadar log forwarding and use-case support
• Scripting/automation:
  • Python, Power Shell, Ansible, PAN-OS API, IaC patterns
• Experience in regulated environments (finance, healthcare, government, critical infrastructure)

• Palo Alto PCCSA / PCNSA / PCNSE (highly desirable)
• ITIL Foundation (helpful)
• Security certs:
  CompTIA Security+, CISSP, CCNP Security (nice to have)