Principal Cybersecurity Engineer - Firewall Policy Implementation (Artificial Intelligence (AI) Experienced)

Role Summary:

We are looking for a Principal Cybersecurity Engineer (Firewall Policy Implementation), with demonstrated AI experience to join our high-performing cybersecurity Team. This is a hands-on, deeply technical, engineering role for firewall experts with real-world Firewall Policy operations and management experience at the large-scale enterprise level. This position is not people management and is not intended for junior or mid-level candidates. Supervisory-only or Advisory-only level experience will not suffice for this role. You will be responsible for operating, maintaining, and optimizing Firewall Platforms, driving policy quality and consistency. Additionally, you will support troubleshooting and operational excellence across a complex, global environment. Over time, you will also help apply Operational Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities to improve efficiency, reliability, and security.

This is not a remote or hybrid position. This role requires onsite presence 5 days per week in the Charlotte, NC hub location. However, other hub locations, such as Dallas, TX; Bothell, WA; Middletown, NJ; or Alpharetta, GA may be considered for exceptionally strong candidate matches.

Key Responsibilities: Typical tasks may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Security Implementation and Management: Optimize and implement firewall rules to mitigate risk, harden perimeter defenses, and protect systems, critical infrastructure, and customer data.
• Firewall Policy Lifecycle Management: Own day-to-day firewall policy operations, management, tuning, cleanup, insertions, removals, and hardware decommissions.
• Execute Configuration Change Management: Safely apply approved firewall policy changes within defined change processes, including validation and post-change verification to ensure changes are properly approved, documented, and meet intended outcomes.
• Troubleshoot Connectivity and Security Policy Issues and Outages: Collaborate with architecture, engineering, and operations teams to troubleshoot outages and security incidents through identification, triage, analysis, containment, recovery, and root cause determination.
• Identify and Drive Automation and AI Opportunities: Leverage AT&T-owned and managed instances of Copilot, ChatGPT, GitHub, Gemini Claude, etc., to reduce tedious manual process and improve accuracy.
• Risk Assessment and Strategic Planning: Perform risk assessments and analyze complex security issues to develop mitigation strategies and reduce attack surface exposure, supporting forward-looking research, planning, and innovation in cybersecurity.
• Technical Support and Collaboration: Provide technical support and expertise for security-related rollouts and issues. Work closely with IT, network, and business units to integrate security measures, and support various cyber-related projects.

Ramp-Up / Initial Focus:

• Learn the team’s environment, offerings, tooling, processes, and operating models.
• Complete structured onboarding: mentoring, coaching sessions, proficiency checks, and shadowing.
• Earn authorization/sign-off to independently execute Firewall policy changes and operational tasks as directed and participate in an on-call rotation for troubleshooting in coordination with AT&T’s Global Technology Operations Center (GTOC).

Long-Term Focus & Scope:

Once fully integrated into the operational rotation, you will execute changes and navigate processes and systems to deliver Firewall policy updates, removals, monitoring/soak, and incident troubleshooting at enterprise scale as directed.

As proficiency grows, you will help introduce and mature AI-assisted operations to improve throughput, reduce risk, and strengthen defense layers.

Required Qualifications:

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

• 7+ years’ experience operating and maintaining Firewall Policies (Rule Sets).
• Extensive hands-on experience managing enterprise Firewall Policy in production environments.
• Strong operational discipline: change control validation, closely following documented processes, rollback planning, and post-change verification.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot Network/Security and Firewall Policy issues under time pressure.
• Experience working in large-scale, complex environments with multiple stakeholders.

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.

Success Looks Like:

• Safe, accurate, and timely delivery of Firewall changes per SLA requirements with minimal rework.
• Strong troubleshooting outcomes and reduced incident recurrence.
• Improved operational efficiency through automation and AI-assisted workflows.
• Clear documentation and process contributions that scale across the team.

• Demonstrated expertise with Palo Alto Firewall policy lifecycle: rule creation/updates, cleanup/removals, recertification, and audit-ready documentation.
• Strong working knowledge of App-ID, User-ID, Content-ID, zones, security policies, NAT policies, and service objects.
• Hands-on experience troubleshooting and resolving issues involving:
  • Security/NAT rule matching and shadowing
  • Routing impacts on policy enforcement
  • Decryption/policy interactions (where applicable)
  • Application behavior vs. port-based assumptions
• Operational rigor with enterprise change processes: risk assessment, implementation plans, validation/testing, rollback planning, and post-change verification.
• Experience using centralized management such as Panorama (templates, device groups, commits, commit validation, log collection basics.)
• Proficiency analyzing logs and traffic flows using Traffic logs, Threat logs, URL logs, and packet captures; ability to validate policy outcomes with evidence.
• Ability to partner effectively with network, application, and operations teams to drive outcomes under time constraints.
• Strong documentation skills and ability to follow/author repeatable processes (playbooks & runbooks).
  Job Contribution: An expert in their field, applying broad business knowledge and strategic insight surrounding emerging trends and technologies to solve complex problems and drive organizational results. Leads critical, high-impact projects and designs/implements innovative business strategies. Works with minimal oversight, frequently consulting senior leadership and influencing executive decisions. Serves as a mentor and assists others with challenging issues.

Supervisor: No

TCP Career Step Differentiator: Manages and leads very complex cybersecurity work and is an expert in a specific cyber area. Creates plans that impact large organizations, multiple very complex applications/system, etc.

Education/Experience: Bachelor’s degree (BS/BA) desired in Computer Science or Cybersecurity. 7+ years of related experience. Certification is required in some areas. Our Principal Cybersecurity jobs earn between $155,400.00 - $261,100.00 USD Annual. Not to mention all the other amazing rewards that working at AT&T offers. Individual starting salary within this range may depend on geography, experience, expertise, and education/training.

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:

40

Time Type:

Regular

Location:

Alpharetta, Georgia, Bothell, Washington, Dallas, Texas, Middletown, New Jersey, USA:NC:Charlotte / Ibm Dr - Adm:8505 Ibm Dr

Salary Range:

$155,400.00 - $261,100.00

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