Principal Cybersecurity Engineer – Firewall Platforms: Firewall Policy with Operational Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This position requires office presence of a minimum of 5 days per week and is only located in the location(s) posted. No relocation is offered.

Join AT&T and reimagine the communications and technologies that connect the world. Our Chief Security Office ensures that our assets are safeguarded through truthful transparency, enforce accountability and master cybersecurity to stay ahead of threats. Bring your bold ideas and fearless risk-taking to redefine connectivity and transform how the world shares stories and experiences that matter. When you step into a career with AT&T, you won’t just imagine the future-you’ll create it.

We are hiring a Principal Cybersecurity Engineer (Firewall Platform) to join our high-performing cybersecurity Team. This is a hands-on keyboard, deeply technical, Engineering role for experts with real-world Firewall Policy operations and management experience at the large-scale enterprise level.  You will be responsible for hands-on-keyboards managing, operating, and optimizing Enterprise Firewall Platforms, driving policy quality and consistency, and supporting troubleshooting and operational excellence across a complex, global environment. Over time, you will also help apply Operational Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve efficiency, reliability, and security.

Key Responsibilities & Growth Expectations:

• Own the end-to-end firewall policy lifecycle, including creation, review, implementation, optimization, monitoring/soak, and decommissioning of policy changes.
• Execute changes safely within defined change management processes, ensuring proper validation, documentation, and post-change verification to meet intended outcomes.
• Operate, maintain, and continuously tune firewall infrastructure to ensure compliance, performance, resiliency, and strong security posture.
• Troubleshoot connectivity and security policy issues in collaboration with architecture, engineering, and operations teams across enterprise environments.
• Progress from guided execution to full ownership of complex policy and operational activities, demonstrating increasing autonomy in managing enterprise-scale network security challenges.
• Deliver high-quality, secure changes at scale while effectively navigating enterprise systems, workflows, and operational frameworks.
• Support a 24x7 operational model, including participation in on-call rotations and coordination with the Global Technology Operations Center (GTOC).
• Identify and drive opportunities for automation and operational excellence, leveraging tools such as Copilot and ChatGPT to improve efficiency, reduce manual effort, and enhance accuracy.
• Contribute to continuous improvement by adopting AI-assisted capabilities and automation to increase throughput, reduce risk, and strengthen overall security effectiveness.
• Maintain high standards for documentation, repeatable processes, and operational readiness to ensure consistency and scalability.

Required Qualifications:

This is a Principal Position requiring direct, recent experience implementing, validating, and troubleshooting Firewall Policies.

• 8+ years of hands-on experience operating, maintaining, and managing firewall platforms in large-scale enterprise environments.
• Demonstrated expertise in firewall policy lifecycle management, including rule creation, optimization, cleanup, recertification, and audit-ready documentation—particularly within Palo Alto environments.
• Strong technical knowledge of firewall constructs (App-ID, User-ID, Content-ID, NAT, zones, security policies, and service objects) and the ability to troubleshoot complex issues involving rule matching, routing impacts, decryption, and application behavior.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot network and security issues under time pressure, delivering consistent resolutions and minimizing incident recurrence.
• Deep operational discipline with enterprise change processes, including risk assessment, validation/testing, rollback planning, and post-change verification.
• Experience using centralized management tools (e.g., Panorama/SCM Pro), including device groups, templates, commits, and log analysis.
• Proficiency in analyzing traffic using logs (Traffic, Threat, URL) and packet captures to validate policy behavior and outcomes.
• Track record of delivering firewall changes safely, accurately, and within SLAs, with minimal rework.
• Strong collaboration skills with cross-functional teams (network, application, operations) to drive timely outcomes in complex environments.
• Commitment to high-quality documentation, including development and adherence to repeatable procedures and runbooks.
• Demonstrated ability to improve operational efficiency and scalability through automation and AI-assisted workflows, contributing to stronger security posture and reduced risk.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) or equivalent cybersecurity certification (CISM, CISA, CRISC, etc.).
• Any Palo Alto certifications such as PCNSE / PCNSA (or equivalent demonstrated experience).
•  Experience with Palo Alto CLI policy automation, orchestration, or "policy as code" approaches and Python policy scripting.
• Experience with Visual Studio Code, Jupyter Notebook, and Agentic coding using GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, OpenAI Codex (ChatGPT).
• 8+ years of hands-on cybersecurity/network security engineering experience, including enterprise operations.
• 5+ years of Palo Alto Networks (PAN-OS) Firewall platform and policy management in production environments.
• Exposure to AI/ML-enabled operations, AIOps, or using AI tooling for incident reduction and efficiency.
• Familiarity with metrics-driven operations (usage, hit counts, error rates, change success, MTTR, policy hygiene)
• Experience with AlgoSec, URL Filtering, WildFire, Threat Prevention, DNS Security, and security profile tuning.
• Experience with SSL decryption strategy/operations, including break/fix and exception handling.
• Exposure to AIOps / Operational AI use cases (e.g., anomaly detection, change risk scoring, incident summarization, knowledge retrieval, workflow automation).
• Experience integrating Firewall operations with ITSM and CI/CD tooling (e.g., ServiceNow workflows, change gates, automated validation).
• Familiarity with network fundamentals at scale: BGP/OSPF basics, VRFs, VLANs, IPsec concepts, DNS, and load-balancing impacts on traffic paths.

Education/Experience:

Bachelor’s degree (BS/BA) desired in Computer Science or Cybersecurity. 7+ years of related experience. Certification is required in some areas.

Supervisor:

No

Joining our team comes with amazing perks and benefits:

• Medical/Dental/Vision coverage
• 401(k) plan
• Tuition reimbursement program
• Paid Time Off and Holidays (based on date of hire, at least 23 days of vacation each year and 9 company-designated holidays)
• Paid Parental Leave
• Paid Caregiver Leave
• Additional sick leave beyond what state and local law require may be available but is unprotected
• Adoption Reimbursement
• Disability Benefits (short term and long term)
• Life and Accidental Death Insurance
• Supplemental benefit programs: critical illness/accident hospital indemnity/group legal
• Employee Assistance Programs (EAP)
• Extensive employee wellness programs
• Employee discounts up to 50% off on eligible AT&T mobility plans and accessories, AT&T internet (and fiber where available) and AT&T phone

Weekly Hours:

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It is the policy of AT&T to provide equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, AT&T will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. AT&T is a fair chance employer and does not initiate a background check until an offer is made.