Senior Network and Security Engineer

Role Purpose

An well known insurance client is looking for a Senior Network and Security Engineer to join their team in Sandton, GP who is comfortable working in a busy, security‑critical enterprise environment and can take ownership of network, firewall, Azure connectivity, monitoring, and data centre network operations. The role requires strong hands‑on Forti Gate experience, proven Extreme Networks switching knowledge, practical Azure networking exposure, and the ability to keep a regulated financial services environment stable, secure, well documented, and ready for incident response or disaster recovery scenarios.

This is a hands‑on engineering role with responsibility across data centres, core network infrastructure, firewall operations, hybrid cloud connectivity, monitoring, incident response, maintenance, documentation, vendor engagement, and continuous improvement of the network estate. The person must be able to operate independently, act as an escalation point, and provide practical guidance to junior engineers while maintaining clear communication with technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

1. Enterprise Networking

• Design, implement, support, and maintain LAN, WAN, WLAN, and data centre network infrastructure.

• Support enterprise switching with a strong focus on Extreme Networks platforms.

• Configure and maintain VLANs, trunks, STP, redundancy, link aggregation, and resilient Layer 2 designs.

• Handle advanced routing and switching (OSPF, BGP, static routing, route redistribution, high availability failover).

• Troubleshoot performance, latency, packet loss, routing, STP, and connectivity issues.

• Act as an escalation point for complex network incidents and recurring issues.

• Contribute to network architecture decisions, standards, lifecycle refresh, and operational improvements.

2. Extreme Networks Switching

• Configure, troubleshoot, and maintain Extreme Networks switches in production and data centre environments.

• Support switch stacks, chassis, edge, core, and aggregation layer configurations.

• Maintain resilient connectivity via trunking, link aggregation, STP tuning, redundant uplinks, and failover paths.

• Investigate switch port errors, interface utilisation, duplex/speed mismatches, VLAN mismatches, and MAC learning issues.

• Maintain consistent configuration standards and back up switch configurations.

• Support planned maintenance, firmware upgrades, configuration changes, and switch replacements.

3. Firewall and Network Security (Forti Gate Essential)

• Configure, manage, and maintain Forti Gate firewalls across the enterprise.

• Own firewall policy and rule management (rule creation, optimisation, clean up, NAT, UTM profiles, security policies).

• Configure and troubleshoot VPN solutions (site‑to‑site, remote access, third‑party, cloud connectivity).

• Monitor firewall health, logs, sessions, interface utilisation, VPN tunnels, and security events.

• Investigate and resolve firewall‑related incidents affecting applications, users, systems, vendors, or cloud connectivity.

• Support firewall hardening, segmentation, least‑privilege access, and policy governance.

• Support security audits, evidence gathering, compliance requirements, and remediation in a regulated financial services environment.

• Work with Forti Manager and Forti Analyzer for centralised policy management, reporting, logging, and visibility.

• Experience with IPS, IDS, SSL inspection, web filtering, application control, and security event investigation is advantageous.

4. Azure Networking and Hybrid Cloud Connectivity

• Demonstrate practical Azure networking knowledge (VNets, subnets, NSGs, route tables, Azure DNS, private connectivity, hybrid access).

• Support hybrid networking between on‑premises infrastructure and Microsoft Azure.

• Troubleshoot Azure network routing, name resolution, firewall, NSG, private endpoint, and hybrid connectivity issues.

• Support Microsoft 365, Teams, Exchange Online, and Azure service connectivity from a firewall/network perspective.

• Work closely with cloud, server, security, and application teams to ensure secure, resilient, and well‑documented cloud network architecture.

5. Monitoring, Alerting, and Observability

• Monitor…