Principal Cybersecurity Engineer

Role Overview Providence is looking for an experienced Principal Fortinet Network Security Engineer to design, implement, operate, and optimize enterprise-grade Fortinet security platforms across hybrid and cloud-connected environments.

This role will provide technical leadership for Fortinet firewall operations, policy management, secure connectivity, threat prevention, platform lifecycle, incident support, security architecture alignment, and operational maturity across the environment.

The engineer will help strengthen network security posture by ensuring secure, resilient, compliant, and scalable Fortinet deployments while supporting change governance, incident response, risk reduction, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, implementation, configuration, and support of Fortinet security platforms, including FortiGate, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer.
• Own enterprise firewall policy lifecycle activities, including rule creation, rule review, rule optimization, NAT, routing, VPN, segmentation, and policy hygiene.
• Lead L3/L4 troubleshooting for complex firewall, VPN, routing, connectivity, application access, certificate, and performance issues.
• Architect and enforce secure network access controls across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud-connected environments.
• Manage Fortinet platform upgrades, firmware lifecycle, patching, HA failover testing, configuration backups, and platform hardening.
• Analyze Fortinet logs, traffic flows, blocked sessions, IPS/IDS alerts, VPN logs, and security events to support incident response and operational troubleshooting.
• Partner with SOC, Network, Cloud, IAM, Infrastructure, and application teams to resolve complex security and connectivity issues.
• Drive firewall rule cleanup, risk reduction, configuration standardization, access control improvements, and least privilege enforcement.
• Review and validate firewall changes to ensure alignment with enterprise security standards, regulatory expectations, and change governance.
• Develop and maintain SOPs, runbooks, security baselines, reference architectures, configuration standards, and operational documentation.
• Lead vendor coordination with Fortinet for escalations, bug fixes, firmware recommendations, technical cases, and advanced feature enablement.
• Mentor junior engineers and provide technical guidance on Fortinet operations, troubleshooting, design, and secure configuration practices.
• Support audit, compliance, and risk management activities by providing firewall evidence, configuration details, rule review outputs, and operational documentation.
• Drive automation opportunities for rule deployment, configuration validation, reporting, and compliance monitoring.

Required Skills & Experience

• 8-12+ years of experience in Network Security, Firewall Engineering, or Cybersecurity Engineering.
• Strong hands-on experience with FortiGate firewalls, including firewall policies, NAT, routing, VPN, HA, UTM/security profiles, IPS, web filtering, application control, and SSL inspection.
• Strong working experience with FortiManager for centralized firewall management, policy deployment, configuration management, and operational governance.
• Strong working experience with FortiAnalyzer for log analysis, reporting, event review, firewall usage analysis, and incident support.
• Strong knowledge of TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, DNS, DHCP, BGP/OSPF basics, IPsec VPN, SSL VPN, segmentation, and secure access controls.
• Experience supporting large enterprise firewall environments with high availability, change governance, and operational stability requirements.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across firewall policy, routing, VPN, packet flow, application access, certificates, and performance issues.
• Good understanding of Zero Trust, SASE, secure remote access, network segmentation, and defense-in-depth security principles.
• Experience working with ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow for incident, change, problem, and request management.
• Strong documentation, analytical, communication, stakeholder management, and leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Fortinet certifications such as NSE 4, NSE 5, NSE 6, or NSE 7.
• CCNP Security, CISSP, or equivalent security/networking certification.
• Experience in healthcare, financial services, or other regulated enterprise environments.
• Exposure to cloud networking and cloud security across Azure or AWS.
• Experience integrating firewall telemetry with SIEM, SOC monitoring, vulnerability management, or security analytics platforms.
• Experience with automation or scripting for firewall operations, configuration validation, compliance checks, or reporting.

What Would Your Work Week Look Like?

• Lead Fortinet firewall operations, including ticket reviews, complex troubleshooting, change validations, and policy governance.
• Review firewall logs, security alerts, VPN issues, traffic flows, blocked connections, and operational dashboards.
• Work with infrastructure, cloud, application, SOC, and IAM teams to resolve security and connectivity challenges.
• Participate in design discussions, architecture reviews, firewall migration planning, and platform improvement initiatives.
• Execute or review firewall changes, firmware upgrades, HA testing, rule optimization, and security hardening activities.
• Maintain and improve SOPs, operational runbooks, audit evidence, configuration standards, and firewall governance documentation.
• Provide technical mentoring to junior engineers and act as an escalation point for critical Fortinet-related issues.