Security Engineer – Edge & Cloud Security (Akamai / AWS) [214103]
Job Description
Remote contract opportunity for a Senior Security Engineer focused on edge and cloud application protection during an enterprise migration to AWS. You will take ownership of the operational health, configuration, and fine-tuning of Akamai’s App & API Protector (WAF) and Bot Manager Premier (BMP), while partnering with AWS migration teams to maintain security and availability across transitional states.
Pay: USD 107 - 110 per hour. Location: Remote (remote). Experience: 5+ years. Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or equivalent practical experience.
Responsibilities
- Design, optimize, and maintain Akamai WAF rulesets, rate-limiting policies, and custom bot detection conditions aligned with application risk profiles.
- Collaborate with AWS migration teams on routing cutovers, ensuring policy parity between on-prem and cloud workloads, and safeguarding endpoints during migration transitions.
- Act as Tier-3 escalation during active Layer 7 attacks, automated scraping, credential stuffing, and zero-day exploit attempts, including rapid triage and post-incident root cause analyses (RCA).
- Define baseline evaluation methodologies for new rule updates, staging deployments, and proactive false-positive suppression.
- Integrate Akamai log streams (DataStream, SIEM integration) with central logging solutions such as Splunk and Datadog to produce actionable threat dashboards and executive reporting.
- Maintain architectural diagrams, runbooks, and policy documentation to support operational handoffs and engineering execution.
Requirements
- 5+ years hands-on Akamai Edge Security, including deploying, managing, and tuning Akamai Web Application Firewall (Kona / App & API Protector) and Bot Manager Premier (BMP) in high-traffic, multi-tenant enterprise environments.
- Proven ability tuning behavioral bot detections to mitigate Layer 7 DDoS and credential stuffing, while eliminating false positives without impacting user experience.
- Deep understanding of OWASP Top 10, API security risks, HTTP/S protocol behaviors, and edge-based threat mitigation.
- Working knowledge of AWS networking and application architectures including ALBs, CloudFront, Route 53, and VPCs, plus experience with how edge proxies integrate into hybrid routing.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years directly configuring and troubleshooting Akamai WAF and Bot Manager Premier.
- Strong proficiency with network analysis and debugging tools such as Wireshark, cURL, Fiddler, and Postman, along with browser inspection for payload troubleshooting.
- Experience analyzing enterprise logs and working with SIEM tooling, including Splunk, Elastic, and Sentinel.
- Excellent verbal and written communication, comfortable advising software engineers and senior leadership during active incidents.
Technologies
Akamai App & API Protector, Akamai Web Application Firewall (Kona / App & API Protector), Akamai Bot Manager Premier (BMP), OWASP Top 10, AWS, ALBs, CloudFront, Route 53, VPCs, HTTP/S, DataStream, SIEM integration, Splunk, Datadog, Elastic, Sentinel, Wireshark, cURL, Fiddler, Postman, Infrastructure as Code, Terraform, Akamai CLI, Akamai APIs, Google Web Application Penetration Testing (GWAPT), GIAC (GCIH, GWAPT).
Core Must-Haves
- 5+ years hands-on Akamai Edge Security expertise with Akamai WAF (Kona / App & API Protector) and Bot Manager Premier (BMP) in high-traffic, multi-tenant enterprise architectures.
- Incident response and bot tuning experience, including Layer 7 DDoS and credential stuffing mitigation and false-positive reduction without degrading user experience.
- AppSec fundamentals: OWASP Top 10, API security risks, HTTP/S protocol behaviors, and edge threat mitigation.
- Cloud and hybrid networking knowledge covering AWS architectures (ALBs, CloudFront, Route 53, VPCs) and edge proxy integration into hybrid cloud routing.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience managing edge security through Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Akamai CLI / APIs).
- Security engineering experience in financial services, e-commerce, or other regulated environments.
- Active security or cloud certifications, such as Akamai Certified Specialist, AWS Certified Security – Specialty, CCSP, or GIAC (GWAPT, GCIH).