Network Security Engineer

Altera•San Jose, CA

1d•$133,200 - $192,825•Onsite

About The Position

As a Senior Network Security Engineer at Altera, you will serve as a senior technical authority responsible for defining and advancing enterprise network security strategy, architecture, and the technical roadmap across on-premises, cloud, data center, laboratory, campus, WAN, and hybrid environments. You will architect secure, resilient, and scalable network solutions grounded in Zero Trust, least-privilege access, micro-segmentation, and secure-by-design principles, while providing technical leadership across firewalls, ZTNA, SASE, SD-WAN, NDR, IDS/IPS, network telemetry, and security automation. The role combines hands-on engineering expertise with strategic architecture ownership and cross-functional influence. You will partner with Network Engineering, Cloud, Infrastructure, DevOps, Product Security, and Risk teams to turn security requirements into implementable designs. You will serve as a senior escalation point for complex security incidents and architecture decisions, drive measurable improvements to the security posture, establish engineering standards and repeatable processes, mentor engineers, and communicate technical risks and recommendations to technical and executive audiences.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
8+ years of experience in enterprise networking and cybersecurity, including substantial experience designing security architecture for large, distributed environments.
Demonstrated success serving as a principal engineer, architect, or senior technical authority for complex network-security programs and transformations.
Proven ability to own technical outcomes from discovery and requirements through design, implementation guidance, validation, and operational transition.
Excellent executive-level communication skills and ability to translate technical concepts into business-aligned recommendations.
Strong stakeholder management across technical and non-technical teams.

Nice To Haves

Deep expertise in enterprise network architecture, TCP/IP, routing, switching, BGP, DNS, TLS, proxies, VPN, firewalls, IDS/IPS, segmentation, and Zero Trust.
Hands-on experience with next-generation firewalls, firewall policy governance, ZTNA, SWG, SASE, SD-WAN, NDR, SIEM, and related network-security controls.
Strong packet capture, protocol analysis, network-flow analysis, and complex troubleshooting skills.
Experience designing secure network connectivity and controls across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.
Experience with enterprise platforms such as Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Tufin, Azure, AWS, or comparable technologies.
Strong understanding of high availability, failover, capacity, secure management planes, encrypted connectivity, and resilient architecture.
Experience in firewall management, administration, and operations, including firewall architecture, policy lifecycle management, rule recertification, configuration hardening, and operational governance.
Ability to identify and reduce attack paths, improve rule hygiene, expand segmentation coverage, and strengthen network telemetry.
Proficiency in network incident response, technical escalation, root-cause analysis, and remediation design.
Ability to establish repeatable engineering processes, architecture review methods, validation criteria, and operational runbooks.
Experience automating network-security analysis, policy management, validation, or reporting using Python, APIs, infrastructure-as-code, KQL, or similar technologies.

Responsibilities

Define and evolve enterprise network security strategy, target-state architecture, technical roadmap, and reusable reference patterns.
Serve as the senior technical authority for complex network security decisions, design exceptions, and modernization initiatives.
Drive adoption of Zero Trust, least-privilege access, micro-segmentation, and secure-by-design network principles.
Establish architecture standards, decision criteria, and measurable outcomes for attack-path reduction, rule hygiene, segmentation coverage, resilience, and network visibility.
Architect and review secure designs for data center, campus, laboratory, cloud, WAN, remote-access, and hybrid environments.
Design segmentation and traffic-control models using security zones, VRFs, next-generation firewalls, secure routing, identity-aware access, and workload-level controls.
Evaluate and guide adoption of ZTNA, SWG, SASE, SD-WAN, NDR, IDS/IPS, firewall, and network-security automation capabilities.
Partner with network, cloud, platform, product security, and operations teams to translate security requirements into implementable designs.
Validate architecture through design reviews, configuration analysis, packet and flow analysis, resilience testing, and post-implementation verification.
Conduct firewall administration and operations, including policy lifecycle management, rule administration, hardening, and exception governance.
Provide senior technical expertise during investigations involving network intrusion, lateral movement, command-and-control activity, privilege misuse, and data exfiltration.
Design and improve network telemetry, logging, detection coverage, and correlation across SIEM, NDR, firewalls, proxies, DNS, VPN, and cloud network services.
Perform or guide packet capture, flow analysis, protocol troubleshooting, and root-cause analysis for complex security events.
Act as a technical escalation point during major incidents and translate findings into architecture improvements, detection enhancements, and remediation plans.
Perform security architecture and risk assessments for new systems, cloud services, network changes, and exceptions.
Author and maintain network security standards, reference architectures, technical guidelines, and control requirements.
Align designs with relevant frameworks and requirements, including NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-53, NIST SP 800-207, and ISO/IEC 27001.
Provide technical evidence and remediation guidance for audits, assessments, and control-validation activities.
Advise IT and Engineering teams and stakeholders across Network Engineering, Cloud, Infrastructure, DevOps, Product Security, Risk, Privacy, and Legal.
Facilitate architecture workshops and design reviews, documenting decisions, risks, assumptions, and required controls.
Translate complex technical risks into practical, business-aligned recommendations for engineering and executive audiences.
Influence delivery teams without direct authority and mentor engineers through technical guidance, peer review, and knowledge sharing.