Network Security Specialist Senior (WAF)

Worldpay•Cincinnati, OH

1d•$127,500 - $192,525•Hybrid

About The Position

This position is hybrid, requiring 3 days per week in either our Cincinnati, OH, or Atlanta, GA offices, or 2 days per week if located in our Denver, CO office. The role focuses on strengthening and evolving web application firewall (WAF), edge security, and application protection platforms within a global enterprise. It's a hands-on technical leadership position concentrating on WAF, edge security, application-layer controls, bot mitigation, API protection, and traffic inspection, utilizing core platforms like Akamai and Cloudflare. The role supports business-critical applications globally, involving engineering and delivery, service reliability improvements, false positive reduction, mentoring, and acting as a technical escalation point for high-severity incidents. Approximately 80% of the time is dedicated to design, implementation, tuning, and operational improvements, with 20% for incident mitigation and high-severity response. The role also includes participation in a rotating on-call schedule for incidents and acting as a senior escalation point for major issues.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in a related field and 12+ years of experience, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience in network security, application security, edge security, or security engineering roles within enterprise environments.
Strong hands-on experience with WAF technologies, especially Akamai and Cloudflare, including managed rules, custom rules, bot protection, rate limiting, API protection, and security analytics.
Experience with WAF policy design and operations, including application onboarding, traffic inspection, rule tuning, exception handling, troubleshooting, and false-positive reduction.
Strong networking and security fundamentals, including TCP/IP, TLS, DNS, HTTP/S, certificates, routing, NAT, CDN/reverse proxy concepts, and zero trust.
Experience supporting large-scale global environments, serving as a senior escalation point during major incidents, mentoring engineers, reviewing work, and communicating effectively across teams.
Must be a US Citizen or Green Card Holder.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Terraform, Python, CI/CD, APIs, or automation for security platforms.
Familiarity with SWG, Proxy, SASE, Secure Access, Zscaler, Prisma Access, or Palo Alto technologies.
Experience with F5 Distributed Cloud (XC) DDoS protection, CDN traffic management, or hybrid edge architectures.
Exposure to regulated environments or relevant certifications such as Akamai, Cloudflare, CISSP, GIAC, PCNSE, or Zscaler.

Responsibilities

Lead engineering and continuous improvement for WAF and edge security platforms, with primary focus on application protection, bot mitigation, API protection, and related controls across a global enterprise environment.
Administer, harden, and optimize Akamai and Cloudflare platforms, including WAF policies, managed rules, custom rules, rate limiting, bot controls, API security, and security analytics.
Design, maintain, and tune scalable WAF security policies for internet-facing applications, including traffic inspection, threat protection, allow/block logic, exception handling, and false-positive reduction.
Drive reliable and secure platform changes through safe rollout planning, validation, rollback readiness, post-change review, and operational standardization.
Serve as a technical lead and escalation point for complex WAF issues, high-risk changes, application access problems, and high-severity incidents.
Partner with internal teams and vendors to improve service reliability and visibility, including SOC/IR, Application Security, Network Operations, infrastructure, application teams, and vendors; improve logging, telemetry, SIEM integration, runbooks, metrics, and durable vendor resolutions.
Participate in a rotating on-call schedule for incidents.
Act as a senior escalation point for major issues affecting WAF, edge security, application protection, or related network security services.
Contribute to post-incident analysis and ensure durable corrective actions are implemented.
Participate in readiness activities, operational reviews, and resilience improvements for critical edge and application security services.