Principal Security Engineer - Checkpoint & PaloAlto

Overview

TekWissen is a global workforce management provider throughout India and many other countries in the world. The below job opportunity is one of our clients which has been a one-stop solution for professional digital services.

Position:Principal Security Engineer (L3) - Checkpoint & PaloAlto

Location: Pune

Job Type: Full Time

Work Type: Remote

Job Summary

• The Principal Security Engineer is the bank's most senior technical authority for network-security and firewall architecture, setting the target-state design, standards and engineering direction for the Check Point and Palo Alto estate across production, DMZ, DR and cloud.
• Operating as a hands-on design leader rather than a people manager, the role owns architecture decisions, complex programme delivery (migrations, refreshes, segmentation), threat-prevention strategy, automation, and the highest level of incident and problem escalation — driving resilience, security posture and regulatory assurance for business-critical and customer-facing banking services.
• The role influences across teams and vendors and mentors senior and L3 engineers.
  
  

Key Responsibilities

• Architecture & Technical Strategy
• Own the target-state architecture and technical roadmap for the firewall and network-security estate (Check Point and Palo Alto), aligned to Enterprise Architecture and Information Security strategy.
• Define and enforce security design standards, reference architectures, hardening baselines and rule-lifecycle governance across the bank.
• Lead network segmentation and Zero-Trust / micro-segmentation strategy, DMZ and east-west security design, and secure connectivity for cloud and hybrid environments.
• Provide design authority and technical sign-off on high-impact changes, new solutions and HLD/LLD across the security estate
• Deep Platform Engineering — Check Point & Palo Alto
• Act as the deepest technical escalation and design authority on Check Point (Gaia, MDS/Provider-1, ClusterXL, VSX, Maestro hyperscale) and Palo Alto (PAN-OS, Panorama, App-ID/User-ID/Content-ID, Threat Prevention, WildFire, GlobalProtect).
• Design and validate high-scale, highly-available firewall deployments, including capacity, throughput and interface/uplink planning to eliminate single points of failure and chokepoints.
• Set threat-prevention, IPS and SSL-decryption strategy and tuning standards for a banking threat profile.
• Lead complex platform migrations, refreshes and major version upgrades end-to-end, with robust rollback and minimal business impact.
• Automation & Engineering Excellence
• Drive automation of policy, configuration and change (Check Point Management API, Palo Alto AS3/XML API, Ansible/Python) to improve consistency, speed and auditability.
• Establish infrastructure-as-code and configuration-standardisation practices for the security estate.
• Champion observability, config backup/compliance (SolarWinds NCM) and continuous posture monitoring.
• Governance, Risk & Assurance
• Serve as senior technical lead for audits and regulatory engagements (SAMA / CBUAE, PCI-DSS); own remediation strategy and evidence for network-security findings.
• Partner with Information Security (ISG), Risk and Enterprise Architecture on security posture, standards and technology selection.
• Lead root-cause analysis and problem management for major (P1) security incidents and define preventive controls.
• Technical Leadership & Mentoring
• Mentor and uplift senior, L3 and L2 engineers; set engineering standards and review complex designs and changes.
• Represent the bank in senior technical engagements with OEMs/vendors (Check Point, Palo Alto, F5) and influence product roadmaps and support outcomes.
• Required Skills & Experience
• Expert-level, current hands-on mastery of Check Point (incl. MDS, VSX, Maestro) and Palo Alto (incl. Panorama, advanced Threat Prevention).
• Strong architecture capability — segmentation, Zero Trust, DMZ, hybrid/cloud security connectivity, and HA/DR design.
• Advanced networking — routing/switching, NAT, VPN (IPsec/SSL), BGP/OSPF, and high-throughput/interface design.
• Automation and IaC — Check Point/Palo Alto APIs, Ansible, Python; CI/CD for network security desirable.
• Adjacent controls — IPS/IDS, WAF/F5, proxy/SASE/SSE, and SIEM integration.
• Strong grasp of security frameworks and regulatory requirements relevant to banking.
• Certifications (Preferred)
• Check Point CCSM (Master) — CCSE required as a minimum.
• Palo Alto PCNSE (and PCSAE/ architecture credentials desirable).
• CISSP and/or security architecture certification (e.g. SABSA, TOGAF) strongly preferred.
• Cloud security certification (Azure / AWS) an advantage.
• Experience & Qualifications
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Security or related field.
• 12+ years in network/security engineering, including significant time as a senior/lead or architect owning firewall and network-security design at enterprise scale.
• Demonstrable track record leading large migrations, segmentation programmes and multi-vendor security architecture.
• Banking or large regulated-enterprise experience with business-critical, customer-facing environments strongly preferred.
• Behavioral / Leadership Skills
• Recognised technical authority — sets direction and makes high-stakes design decisions with confidence and sound judgement.
• Excellent communication — able to influence leadership, articulate risk, and align stakeholders and vendors.
• Strong ownership, and a disciplined approach to change, documentation, risk and assurance.
• Collaborative technical leader who elevates the capability of the wider engineering team.
• Preferred Industry Experience
• Banking
• Financial Services
• Insurance (BFSI)
• Large Enterprise Security Operations Environment
• Work Model
• Full-time Remote/ customer 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
  

TekWissen® Group is an equal opportunity employer supporting workforce diversity.