Principal Network Security Engineer

Job Details: Job Description: About the Role This principal-level individual contributor serves as Altera’s senior technical authority for network security architecture and engineering. The role defines scalable security patterns, guides complex designs, and provides hands-on expertise to strengthen the resilience, integrity, and protection of Altera’s global infrastructure and data. Department Description Altera’s Information Security organization is responsible for: • Incident response and digital forensics • Threat hunting and event analysis • Security policy, standards, and governance • Risk assessments and advisory • Security architecture and engineering support • Threat detection, monitoring, and forensic capabilities • Security awareness and education • Endpoint, network, and cloud security As Principal Network Security Engineer/Architect, you will shape, design, and improve the security of Altera’s on-premises, cloud, and hybrid network environments. You will operate as a hands-on technical lead and trusted advisor, influencing engineering teams through architecture, standards, technical decisions, and mentorship without direct people-management responsibility. Technical Strategy & Architecture Ownership • Define and evolve Altera’s enterprise network security strategy, target-state architecture, technical roadmap, and reusable reference patterns. • Serve as the senior technical authority for complex network security decisions, design exceptions, and modernization initiatives. • Drive adoption of Zero Trust, least-privilege access, micro-segmentation, and secure-by-design network principles. • Establish architecture standards, decision criteria, and measurable outcomes for attack-path reduction, rule hygiene, segmentation coverage, resilience, and network visibility. Network Security Architecture & Engineering • Architect and review secure designs for data center, campus, laboratory, cloud, WAN, remote-access, and hybrid environments. • Design segmentation and traffic-control models using security zones, VRFs, next-generation firewalls, secure routing, identity-aware access, and workload-level controls. • Evaluate and guide adoption of ZTNA, SWG, SASE, SD-WAN, NDR, IDS/IPS, firewall, and network-security automation capabilities. • Partner with network, cloud, platform, product security, and operations teams to translate security requirements into implementable designs. • Validate architecture through design reviews, configuration analysis, packet and flow analysis, resilience testing, and post-implementation verification. • Conduct ongoing firewall administration and operations including policy lifecycle management, rule administration, hardening, and exception governance. Threat Detection, Monitoring, & Incident Response • Provide senior technical expertise during investigations involving network intrusion, lateral movement, command-and-control activity, privilege misuse, and data exfiltration. • Design and improve network telemetry, logging, detection coverage, and correlation across SIEM, NDR, firewalls, proxies, DNS, VPN, and cloud network services. • Perform or guide packet capture, flow analysis, protocol troubleshooting, and root-cause analysis for complex security events. • Act as a technical escalation point during major incidents and translate findings into architecture improvements, detection enhancements, and remediation plans. Risk Management, Governance & Compliance • Perform security architecture and risk assessments for new systems, cloud services, network changes, and exceptions. • Author and maintain network security standards, reference architectures, technical guidelines, and control requirements. • Align designs with relevant frameworks and requirements, including NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-53, NIST SP 800-207, and ISO/IEC 27001. • Provide technical evidence and remediation guidance for audits, assessments, and control-validation activities. Cross‑Functional Collaboration & Communication • Serve as a trusted technical advisor to IT & Engineering teams including Network Engineering, Cloud, Infrastructure, DevOps, Product Security, Risk, Privacy, and Legal stakeholders. • Facilitate architecture workshops and design reviews, clearly documenting decisions, risks, assumptions, and required controls. • Translate complex technical risks into practical, business-aligned recommendations for engineering and executive audiences. • Influence delivery teams without direct authority and mentor engineers through technical guidance, peer review, and knowledge sharing. Qualifications: Required Experience • 8+ years of progressive experience in enterprise networking and cybersecurity, including substantial experience designing security architecture for large, distributed environments. • Demonstrated success serving as a principal engineer, architect, or senior technical authority for complex network-security programs and transformations. • Proven ability to own technical outcomes from discovery and requirements through design, implementation guidance, validation, and operational transition. Technical Expertise • Deep expertise in enterprise network architecture, TCP/IP, routing, switching, BGP, DNS, TLS, proxies, VPN, firewalls, IDS/IPS, segmentation, and Zero Trust. • Hands-on experience with next-generation firewalls, firewall policy governance, ZTNA, SWG, SASE, SD-WAN, NDR, SIEM, and related network-security controls. • Strong packet capture, protocol analysis, network-flow analysis, and complex troubleshooting skills. • Experience designing secure network connectivity and controls across on-prem, cloud and hybrid environments. • Experience with common enterprise platforms such as Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Tufin, Azure, AWS, or comparable technologies. • Strong understanding of high availability, failover, capacity, secure management planes, encrypted connectivity, and resilient architecture. Operational & Strategic Skills • Exp…