Senior Security Administrator  - Palo Alto

Senior Security Administrator - Palo Alto

Posted Today by Experis UK

Negotiable
Inside
Hybrid
City Of London, England, United Kingdom

Summary: The Senior Security Administrator role focuses on leveraging Palo Alto Networks expertise to enhance security operations within enterprise environments. The position involves hands-on administration, configuration, and policy management of Palo Alto security controls, ensuring secure network operations. Collaboration with infrastructure, networking, and SOC teams is essential to deliver robust security outcomes in complex environments. The role is hybrid and classified as inside IR35, requiring work through an umbrella company.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Administer, configure, and support Palo Alto NGFWs (PA-Series / VM-Series) including security policy rules, NAT, zones, routing, interfaces, HA, and objects.
  • Manage App-ID / User-ID / Content-ID, URL filtering, Anti-Spyware, Vulnerability profiles, and SSL decryption policy management.
  • Work closely with Network Engineers, Cloud/Platform teams, and Service Owners.
  • Support projects such as firewall migrations, data centre moves, cloud connectivity, and segmentation initiatives.
  • Implement Zero Trust or least privilege initiatives and integration with SIEM/SOAR tooling.

Key Skills:

  • Strong hands-on experience administering Palo Alto NGFWs in enterprise environments.
  • Proven experience with Panorama for centralized policy and device management.
  • Understanding of network security principles, TCP/IP, routing (BGP/OSPF helpful), NAT, and VPN concepts.
  • Skilled troubleshooting ability using logs, packet capture, and CLI diagnostics.
  • Experience operating within ITIL-style change management and incident processes.
  • Strong documentation skills and ability to communicate clearly to technical/non-technical stakeholders.

Salary (Rate): undetermined

City: City Of London

Country: United Kingdom

Working Arrangements: hybrid

IR35 Status: inside IR35

Seniority Level: undetermined

Industry: IT

Detailed Description From Employer:

Security Administrator 6 months London - hybrid Inside IR35 - Umbrella only

Role Overview

Palo Alto Networks expertise to support and enhance our security operations. Palo Alto Networks provides a comprehensive, AI-powered SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) solution known as Prisma SASE. It is designed to converge networking and security into a single cloud-delivered platform to support hybrid workforces and modern, distributed enterprises

You will be responsible for the administration, configuration, policy management, monitoring, and optimisation of Palo Alto security controls, ensuring secure and resilient network operations across enterprise environments. This role is hands-on, need to be comfortable working in complex, regulated, or high-availability environments, partnering with infrastructure, networking, and SOC teams to deliver robust security outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

  • Palo Alto Administer, configure, and support Palo Alto NGFWs (PA-Series / VM-Series) including:
    • Security policy rules, NAT, zones, routing, interfaces, HA, and objects
    • App-ID / User-ID / Content-ID, URL filtering, Anti-Spyware, Vulnerability profiles
    • SSL decryption policy management (where applicable) and related operational impacts
  • Work closely with Network Engineers, Cloud/Platform teams, and Service Owners
  • Support projects such as:
    • Firewall migrations, data centre moves, cloud connectivity, segmentation initiatives
    • Zero Trust or least privilege initiatives
    • Integration with SIEM/SOAR tooling

Required Skills

  • Strong hands-on experience administering Palo Alto NGFWs in enterprise environments
  • Proven experience with Panorama for centralised policy and device management
  • Understanding of:
    • Network security principles (segmentation, least privilege, L3/L4/L7 filtering)
    • TCP/IP, routing (BGP/OSPF helpful), NAT, VPN concepts
  • Skilled troubleshooting ability using logs, packet capture, and CLI diagnostics
  • Experience operating within ITIL-style change management and incident processes
  • Strong documentation skills and ability to communicate clearly to technical/non-technical stakeholders

Desirable Skills (Nice To Have)

  • Palo Alto feature experience: GlobalProtect, site-to-site IPsec VPNs, SSL decryption operations
  • Advanced Threat Prevention tuning, WildFire analysis, DNS Security
  • Cloud security/networking exposure: Azure/AWS/GCP, cloud-native firewalls, transit networking
  • VM-Series deployments, Terraform/automation exposure
  • SIEM integration experience: Splunk / Sentinel / QRadar log forwarding and use-case support
  • Scripting/automation: Python, PowerShell, Ansible, PAN-OS API, IaC patterns
  • Experience in regulated environments (finance, healthcare, government, critical infrastructure)

Certifications

  • Palo Alto PCCSA / PCNSA / PCNSE (highly desirable)
  • ITIL Foundation (helpful)
  • Security certs: CompTIA Security+, CISSP, CCNP Security (nice to have)