Security Engineer (WAF SME)

Kavalio is seeking a Security Engineer (WAF SME) to join their dynamic security operations function. The role involves leading day-to-day operations for the Web Application Firewall (WAF) and ensuring platform stability while collaborating with various teams for incident response and security enhancements.

Responsibilities:

• Monitor and action WAF/edge security ticket queues; resolve incidents and service requests with clear, timely communication
• Triage and respond to Layer 7 events (e.g., bot abuse, credential stuffing, API abuse, SQLi/RCE attempts, L7 DDoS), escalating as needed
• Provide on-call support for Sev 1/Sev 2 incidents; collaborate with SOC/IR, SRE, and application owners on containment and recovery
• Onboard, configure, tune, and optimize Akamai and Cloudflare WAF policies (managed & custom rules, rate limiting, geo/IP/ASN controls, mTLS, headers)
• Manage bot management controls (scoring, allowlists, challenges/JS, behavioral features where available)
• Implement policies for OWASP Top 10, API/WAAP protections, and business logic abuse mitigation
• Balance security vs. latency/caching; measure impacts and roll out changes safely
• Execute changes via standard change control (peer review, testing, staged rollout, rollback plans)
• Maintain certificate management, safe DNS/edge updates, and favor policy-as-code approaches where possible
• Provide platform health/status reporting with recommendations to reduce incident volume and downtime
• Integrate WAF/edge telemetry with SIEM; maintain dashboards for threat trends, false positive rates, coverage, and hygiene
• Create actionable alerts and runbooks/SOPs to accelerate response and reduce recurrence
• Partner with SOC/IR to enhance playbooks and Dev/App teams to align policies with application behavior
• Contribute to internal knowledge base and continuous improvement of control efficacy and resiliency
• Track emerging threats and vendor updates; recommend timely configuration changes and control enhancements

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering (or related field) or equivalent practical experience
• 3–6+ years hands-on experience operating in Network Security space for any enterprise environment
• Must have at least 2 years of hands-on experience with Akamai
• Demonstrated expertise in policy tuning and incident response for web and API protections (blocking vs. challenge strategies, exception handling, FP reduction)
• Solid grasp of HTTP/S, TLS/PKI, DNS, CDN caching/edge routing, and performance tradeoffs
• Experience integrating WAF logs into SIEM and building actionable dashboards/alerts
• Scripting/automation exposure (Terraform, bash, Python, Ansible or PowerShell), comfort with JSON/YAML and regex; API/CLI experience beneficial
• Strong analytical troubleshooting, communication, and cross-team collaboration skills
• Willingness to participate in rotational on-call
• Certifications: Akamai ACA/ACP, Cloudflare, CISSP, Security+, GIAC (GWAPT/GWEB/GCIH), PCI ISA, AZ 104/AZ 700, AWS SAA/SOAA
• Familiarity with any of following: Cloudflare, Fastly, Imperva, F5 ASM/Advanced WAF, Azure Front Door, AWS CloudFront + WAF
• Vendor/platform depth: F5 iRules, Fastly VCL behaviors, or vendor policy DSLs
• Broader security stack familiarity (e.g., DDoS scrubbing, SIEM/SOAR, CASB/CSPM, vuln management)
• DevSecOps experience including CI/CD integration for edge policy promotion/testing
• Payments/financial services experience; working knowledge of PCI DSS, NIST CSF, ISO 27001