Context
Alongside project-based engagements, a recurring part of the role is managed security services (MSSP) work: ongoing operational responsibility for multiple clients’ security platforms, covering both planned changes and incident response. It’s the day-to-day of keeping production security infrastructure running correctly, not just standing it up once.
What I do
- Manage Akamai across its full stack for client environments: CDN configuration, WAF policy, DNS, and Zero Trust access
- Operate F5 Distributed Cloud and F5 BIG-IP platforms for clients running application delivery and security through F5
- Manage firewall platforms, Cisco and Palo Alto Networks, handling policy changes and operational issues
- Handle change requests through structured change management processes, and respond to incidents as they arise across this platform portfolio
- Perform troubleshooting across all of the above when something isn’t behaving as expected, often under time pressure during active incidents
Why it matters
Building something once is a different skill from operating it reliably over time. This is the side of the job that involves triaging an incident on a platform I didn’t originally configure, working within a client’s existing change process instead of designing my own from scratch, and keeping several different vendors’ platforms, each with their own operational quirks, running correctly in parallel.