Network Engineer

Title: Network Engineer

Type: Contract to hire

Location: 1 day a week in Fort Worth

Job Description:

We are seeking a Palo Alto Network Security Engineer to join a network/security team and support a significant refresh and modernization of an enterprise network security environment.

This is a hands-on engineering role focused primarily on Palo Alto firewalls, site-to-site VPN migrations, firewall upgrades, troubleshooting, and ongoing security infrastructure support. The engineer will work as part of a collaborative firewall/network team and participate in the continued modernization of the environment.

The ideal candidate has strong Palo Alto Networks experience along with a solid foundation in Cisco networking and security technologies. Experience with Aruba wireless, F5, Infoblox, or NAC technologies is a plus but not required.

Responsibilities

Palo Alto Networks

• Administer, configure, troubleshoot, and maintain Palo Alto Networks firewalls.
• Support the ongoing refresh and modernization of the Palo Alto environment.
• Perform firewall upgrades, configuration changes, policy updates, and maintenance following established change-management procedures.
• Troubleshoot firewall policies, routing, NAT, VPNs, security rules, and connectivity.
• Support migration of existing site-to-site VPNs to Palo Alto firewalls.
• Participate in planning, testing, implementation, and rollback activities for firewall upgrades and infrastructure changes.
• Investigate failed or problematic upgrades and identify root causes.
• Collaborate with firewall and network engineers to review changes and troubleshoot complex security issues.

Network & Cisco

• Troubleshoot issues across LAN/WAN, routing, switching, and security environments.
• Support and troubleshoot Cisco network infrastructure.
• Work with Cisco switches, routers, and related networking technologies.
• Support existing Cisco ASA environments during firewall modernization as needed.
• Collaborate with network engineering and security teams on infrastructure refreshes and technology migrations.

VPN & Network Security

• Design, configure, migrate, and troubleshoot site-to-site VPNs.
• Troubleshoot IPsec connectivity, routing, NAT, authentication, and firewall policy issues.
• Support secure connectivity between corporate locations, cloud environments, vendors, and third-party organizations.
• Analyze traffic flows and firewall logs to isolate connectivity and security issues.

Broader Network/Security Infrastructure

The role may also support or collaborate with teams responsible for:

• F5 load balancers
• Infoblox DNS/DHCP/IPAM
• Aruba wireless
• Aruba ClearPass
• Cisco ISE
• Cisco network infrastructure
• Other network security and infrastructure technologies

Required Experience

• Strong hands-on experience administering and troubleshooting Palo Alto Networks firewalls.
• Experience with Palo Alto firewall upgrades, migrations, and configuration.
• Strong understanding of site-to-site VPNs and IPsec.
• Strong networking fundamentals including routing, switching, NAT, DNS, and TCP/IP.
• Strong Cisco networking experience.
• Ability to troubleshoot complex connectivity issues across multiple network and security layers.
• Experience working within formal change-management and production environments.
• Strong troubleshooting and collaboration skills.

Preferred Experience

• Aruba wireless
• F5
• Infoblox
• Aruba ClearPass
• Cisco ISE
• Cisco ASA
• Large-scale network/security refreshes or technology migrations

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate is a hands-on Palo Alto engineer with strong Cisco networking fundamentals who is comfortable working in a production enterprise environment. They should be able to independently troubleshoot issues across switches, wireless, routing, Palo Alto firewalls, VPNs, remote sites, and applications and determine whether the issue is related to routing, firewall policy, NAT, VPN configuration, DNS, or another layer. This person will own Palo Alto-related work while collaborating with other engineers on complex firewall and network initiatives. The environment is undergoing a significant technology refresh, providing exposure to Palo Alto migrations, VPN modernization, firewall upgrades, and broader network/security infrastructure