Network Security Engineer - F5

Location: Dubai, Customer Onsite

Mode of work: Work from office (Daily)

Job Summary The L3 Network Security Support Engineer is the highest technical escalation point for the bank's perimeter and application-security infrastructure — F5 BIG-IP (LTM load balancing and ASM/Advanced WAF), Intrusion Prevention/Detection systems (Cisco Firepower/FTD), and Next-Generation Firewalls (Palo Alto and Check Point). The role owns complex troubleshooting and root-cause analysis, design and change implementation, performance and capacity management, security policy tuning, and audit/regulatory compliance, ensuring the availability, performance and security of business-critical and customer-facing banking services.

Key Responsibilities

F5 — Load Balancing Web Application Firewall (WAF)

• Provide L3 support for F5 BIG-IP LTM — virtual servers, pools, health monitors, SSL offload, persistence and iRules — for business-critical and customer-facing applications.
• Administer and tune F5 ASM / Advanced WAF — create, tune and enforce WAF policies aligned to OWASP Top 10, manage attack signatures, bot defence, and false-positive reduction, and transition policies from monitoring to blocking mode safely.
• Manage SSL/TLS certificates, cipher/hardening standards, and PKI integration on the F5 estate.
• Troubleshoot latency, performance and availability issues; monitor interface/throughput utilisation; and provide capacity, upgrade and HA-design input.

IPS / IDS (Intrusion Prevention Detection)

• Provide L3 support for the IPS/IDS platform (Cisco Firepower / FTD via FMC) — policy and signature management, tuning, and threat analysis.
• Optimise IPS/IDS policies, reduce false positives, and manage inline vs detection modes; validate coverage of critical assets and segments.
• Perform packet-level analysis and threat investigation; correlate IPS/IDS events with the SIEM for detection and response.
• Maintain signature/rule currency and coordinate tuning with the SOC and threat-intelligence functions.

Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW)

• Provide L3 support for Palo Alto (PAN-OS /Panorama) and Check Point (Gaia / SmartConsole / MDS) firewalls across production and DR.
• Manage security policies, rule bases, NAT, App-ID/URL filtering, threat-prevention profiles, and site-to-site / remote-access VPNs (IPsec/SSL).
• Perform firewall hardening, HA configuration, version/patch management (N-2 compliance), and periodic rule recertification / clean-up of no-hit rules.
• Lead complex firewall change implementation and troubleshooting with minimal business impact.

General L3/ Operational

• Act as the senior escalation point for P1/P2 incidents; lead root-cause analysis and problem management to prevent recurrence.
• Own change management (raise, review and implement CRs) in line with the bank's governance, and contribute to design / Low-Level Design (LLD) for new solutions.
• Support audit and regulatory compliance (e.g. SAMA / CBUAE, PCI-DSS), remediate findings, and maintain configuration backups (SolarWinds NCM) and evidence.
• Maintain SOPs, runbooks and topology documentation; mentor L1/L2 engineers; and coordinate with OEM/vendor TAC for escalations.

Required Skills Experience

• Deep hands-on expertise with F5 BIG-IP — LTM and ASM/Advanced WAF, iRules, SSL/TLS.
• Strong expertise in IPS/IDS — Cisco Firepower/ FTD / FMC (signature tuning, policy, analysis).
• Strong expertise in NGFW — Palo Alto (PAN-OS/Panorama) and Check Point (R8x/Gaia).
• Solid networking foundation — TCP/IP, routing/switching, NAT, VPN (IPsec/SSL), DNS, and load-balancing concepts.
• SSL/TLS, PKI/certificate management, and security hardening standards.
• SIEM integration and log analysis; packet capture and analysis (Wireshark / tcpdump).
• Scripting/automation (Python / Bash / API) desirable for operational efficiency.

Certifications (Preferred)

• F5 Certified — 201/301 (LTM) and ASM/Advanced WAF.
• Cisco CCNP Security / Firepower (SNCF).
• Palo Alto PCNSE.
• Check Point CCSA/ CCSE.
• CISSP / CISM desirable.

Experience Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology or related field.
• 8+ years' experience in network/security engineering, with 3+ years at L3 level supporting F5, IPS/IDS and NGFW.
• Prior experience in a bank or large regulated enterprise, supporting business-critical and customer-facing services, strongly preferred.

Behavioral / Soft Skills

• Strong incident-leadership and problem-solving under pressure (P1 handling).
• Clear written and verbal communication, including stakeholder and leadership updates.
• Disciplined approach to change management, documentation and audit.
• Collaborative team player able to mentor junior engineers and coordinate with vendors.

Preferred Industry Experience

• Banking
• Financial Services
• Insurance (BFSI)
• Large Enterprise Security Operations Environment

Work Model

• Full-time onsite deployment at customer location
• Willingness to support after-hours activities during critical incidents or planned maintenance
• Participation in on-call support rotation if required