Palo Alto Cortex XSIAM / XDR Engineer - Fully REMOTE - Must have either CISSP or any Security+ or GIAC Certifications

Daily Duties / Responsibilities:

THIS POSITION IS 100% REMOTE AND WILL PARTICIPATE IN A MONTHLY ON-CALL ROTATION SUPPORTING A 24X7 SECURITY OPERATIONS CENTER SERVING MULTIPLE STATE AGENCIES. OTHER AFTER-HOURS WORK MAY BE REQUIRED AS NEEDED.

• PRIMARILY Assist in the planning, design, deployment, administration and operational support of enterprise SIEM and XDR capabilities, including:

PALO ALTO CORTEX XSIAM AND CORTEX XDR PLATFORM ENGINEERING, CONFIGURATION, OPTIMIZATION AND TROUBLESHOOTING

MULTI-TENANT AGENCY ONBOARDING, TENANT-SPECIFIC CONFIGURATION, ROLE-BASED ACCESS, DATA SEGREGATION, DASHBOARDS AND REPORTING

DETECTION ENGINEERING, CORRELATION RULES, ANALYTICS, THREAT-HUNTING QUERIES, WATCHLISTS, SUPPRESSION LOGIC AND FALSE-POSITIVE REDUCTION

• SECONDARILY Assist in the planning, design, deployment and operational support of log management and security data pipelines, including:

CRIBL DATA MODELING, LOG PIPELINE DESIGN, ROUTING, PARSING, NORMALIZATION, ENRICHMENT, FILTERING, REPLAY AND INGESTION

ONBOARDING AND HEALTH MONITORING OF CLOUD, ENDPOINT, NETWORK, IDENTITY, SAAS AND CUSTOM APPLICATION TELEMETRY

LOG VOLUME, RETENTION, PERFORMANCE AND COST OPTIMIZATION WHILE MAINTAINING SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS

INTEGRATIONS WITH TICKETING, CASE MANAGEMENT, NOTIFICATION, IDENTITY, THREAT INTELLIGENCE AND OTHER ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS AS NEEDED

• Develop, test, deploy and maintain automated response workflows and playbooks for enrichment, triage, containment, escalation, notifications, case management and incident response.
• Create and maintain operational runbooks, standard operating procedures, escalation matrices, troubleshooting guides, architecture diagrams, data-flow documentation, use-case catalogs and analyst knowledge articles.
• Support Tier 1 through Tier 3 SOC analysts and incident responders through platform troubleshooting, detection tuning, threat hunting, technical escalation, knowledge transfer and shift handoffs.
• Monitor and report on ingestion health, platform availability, alert volumes, detection coverage, false positives, service levels, mean time to detect, mean time to respond and tenant-specific operational metrics.
• Ensure high availability, resilience, backup, recovery, lifecycle management and controlled change processes for SIEM, XDR and supporting log pipeline services.
• Collaborate with security architects, engineers, analysts and agency stakeholders to align solutions with business goals, industry-standard frameworks, regulatory requirements and organizational risk tolerance.

Required Skills (rank in order of Importance):

• HANDS-ON PALO ALTO CORTEX XSIAM AND CORTEX XDR DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION, ADMINISTRATION AND OPERATIONAL SUPPORT.
• Experience engineering and supporting SIEM capabilities for multi-tenant environments and 24x7 Security Operations Center operations.
• CRIBL DATA MODELING, LOG PIPELINE DESIGN, PARSING, NORMALIZATION, ENRICHMENT, ROUTING AND INGESTION.
• Experience developing automation, integrations, playbooks and response workflows using scripting languages such as Python and Bash.
• Experience onboarding and troubleshooting telemetry from cloud, endpoint, network, identity, SaaS, Linux, Windows and custom application sources.
• Strong understanding of enterprise security architecture, incident response, networking, access control, secure system design and industry-standard cybersecurity frameworks.

additional skills & duties:

• Experience developing and tuning detections, correlation rules, analytics, threat-hunting queries, dashboards, reporting and alert suppression logic.
• Strong experience creating and managing complex playbooks
• Familiarity with industry-standard security and compliance frameworks and experience developing playbooks, runbooks, procedures and technical documentation.
• Experience supporting Tier 1 through Tier 3 SOC analysts, threat hunting, incident response and 24x7 operational handoffs.

Required Education/Certifications:

BACHELOR'S DEGREE IN AN

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY OR

INFORMATION SECURITY RELATED

FIELD

EIGHT YEARS OF RELEVANT WORK

EXPERIENCE MAY BE SUBSTITUTED IN LIEU OF EDUCATION

FIVE YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN SUPPORTING LARGE IT ENVIRONMENTS AND/OR SYSTEM DEPLOYMENTS

Preferred Education/Certifications:

CISSP, Security+ or GIAC certification

Palo Alto Cortex, Cribl or other relevant SIEM/security platform certification