WAF / Akamai Security Engineer

WAF / Akamai Security Engineer

Location: NYC, NY or Alpharetta, GA – onsite 3 days a week

Job Description

1. WAF Onboarding & Application Migration

· Lead onboarding of internet-facing applications to Akamai WAF .

· Work with application, DNS, load balancer, proxy, firewall, and QA teams to migrate applications into monitor/alert mode and ultimately deny mode .

· Coordinate testing, rollout plans, traffic cutovers, validation, and rollback procedures.

2. WAF Policy Tuning & False Positive Analysis

· Analyze production traffic and WAF events to identify false positives.

· Tune security policies to reduce business impact while maintaining strong protection.

· Review blocked requests, investigate application behavior, and create narrowly scoped exceptions when justified.

3. AI, LLM & API Security Support

· Troubleshoot AI- and LLM-related traffic that triggers WAF protections, such as SQL injection controls.

· Work with application teams and vendors to design compensating controls, header-based attestation mechanisms, and API-specific protections.

· Evaluate emerging Akamai AI security capabilities, including AI-powered detections, Firewall for AI, bot identification, and agentic AI protections.

4. Security Event Monitoring & Threat Analysis

· Review WAF, Bot Manager, DDoS, Client Reputation, and API Security events.

· Analyze attack patterns and determine whether activity is malicious or legitimate.

· Recommend policy improvements and mitigations based on observed threats.

5. Quarterly Security Reviews & Platform Upgrades

· Conduct structured reviews of applications protected by Akamai.

· Evaluate opportunities to move applications from monitoring to mitigation mode.

· Perform quarterly WAF upgrades, policy reviews, and security-control tuning to keep protections aligned with current threat intelligence.

6. Incident Response & Troubleshooting

· Assist with production incidents where application behavior changes after WAF enablement.

· Investigate latency issues, traffic-routing problems, load-balancer interactions, client IP handling, surge queue events, and application outages.

· Coordinate with Akamai engineering resources and internal teams to identify root causes and corrective actions.

7. Security Architecture & Design Consulting

· Advise application teams on secure web architectures, OWASP protections, API security, bot mitigation, client reputation controls, and DDoS protection .

· Provide guidance on best practices for onboarding, secure application design, and remediation of web vulnerabilities.

8. Program Management & Stakeholder Engagement

· Partner with application owners, infrastructure teams, auditors, risk managers, and security leadership.

· Track onboarding progress, risks, dependencies, and remediation activities through program governance and ticketing systems.

· Present status updates, metrics, risks, and remediation plans to senior management.

9. Operational Metrics & Reporting

· Produce dashboards and reporting covering:

o WAF adoption

o Deny-mode coverage

o Bot mitigation effectiveness

o API discovery

o Security exceptions

o Attack activity

· Measure onboarding progress, control effectiveness, and risk reduction across the organization.

10. Vendor Liaison & Technology Roadmap Guidance

· Act as the primary interface between the enterprise and Akamai .

· Engage Akamai product teams on product defects, enhancement requests, AI roadmap discussions, policy recommendations, and complex troubleshooting.

· Evaluate new Akamai capabilities and coordinate pilot deployments where appropriate.

Mandatory Experience

· 5+ years of Akamai experience

· Akamai Kona Site Defender

· Akamai Bot Manager

· Akamai API Security

· OWASP Top 10

· Incident response experience

Preferred Experience

· AI/LLM security

· Akamai Firewall for AI

· Enterprise-scale migration experience

· Financial services experience