Senior CyberSecurity Architect

About the Role at Cognizant

Cognizant offers a fast-growing, innovative international work environment that fosters entrepreneurial spirits eager to impact the world. Collaborate globally to develop cutting-edge solutions for leading enterprises, driving their innovation, flexibility, and success. Join this success story as a Senior Cybersecurity Architect specializing in cloud and network security.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and maintain Palo Alto firewalls, constantly updating policies and rules to counter emerging threats.
• Configure and manage secure remote access via VPN, enforcing zero trust principles.
• Lead resolution of complex firewall incidents, conduct root cause analyses, and implement preventive corrective measures.
• Ensure thorough testing, backups, audits, and recertification of all firewall changes to meet compliance standards.
• Remove outdated firewall rules to optimize security and system efficiency.
• Advise on policy improvements to enhance firewall operations and long-term effectiveness.
• Manage Cisco ISE identity and AAA services, including workflows and integration with directory and SSO systems.
• Enforce access controls using AAA protocols and RBAC, ensuring compliance with security policies.
• Monitor AAA logs, provide audit and forensic reports, troubleshoot incidents, and maintain documentation with actionable insights.
• Administer and continuously monitor Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect applications against layer-7 attacks and maintain availability.
• Analyze security logs to fine-tune WAF rules, reducing false positives aligned with risk tolerance.
• Implement custom WAF controls, including rate limiting and bot mitigation, to comply with regulations and prevent abuse.
• Deploy and manage Microsoft Entra ID for secure authentication, authorization, and single sign-on across enterprise applications.
• Configure MFA, risk-based authentication, OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and SAML integrations.
• Collaborate with app teams on SSO onboarding, session management, and federation protocols.
• Monitor authentication logs and failures for security and operational transparency.
• Lead centralized vulnerability management using CrowdStrike, overseeing scanning, remediation prioritization, and integration with threat intelligence.
• Maintain comprehensive asset inventories and regularly report security posture and trends to governance bodies.
• Respond rapidly to zero-day vulnerabilities and drive continuous process enhancements.
• Supervise SIEM and endpoint security platforms (CrowdStrike NGSIEM, Falcon), ensuring timely event reviewing, automated incident response via SOAR, and platform health monitoring.
• Track endpoint activity to detect suspicious behaviors and advanced threats proactively.

Mandatory Expertise

• Fundamental cybersecurity principles including threat landscapes, control mechanisms, CIA triad, and MITRE ATT&CK framework.
• Security governance, risk management, compliance protocols, policy creation, risk registers, and audit coordination.
• Familiarity with established frameworks and standards such as ISO 27001/27002, NIST CSF & 800-53, CIS Controls.
• Project delivery experience using secure methodologies like Agile and Waterfall, managing scope, schedule, budgets, and risk documentation.
• Effective stakeholder and executive communication across status updates, escalation handling, and governance forums.
• Managing incident response and vulnerability processes including triage, remediation tracking, and root cause analyses.
• Understanding security operations center processes, SIEM/EDR concepts, and comprehensive logging practices.
• Identity and access management fundamentals including RBAC, MFA, SSO, and PAM concepts.
• Cloud and network security technologies: Firewalls, Proxies, Cisco ISE, WAF in AWS/Azure, network segmentation.
• Develop and analyse security metrics and reporting such as KPIs/KRIs, service performance, and security posture dashboards.
• Change management alignment with ITIL practices, conducting CAB reviews and problem management strategies.

Additional Duties

• Responsible for business-as-usual delivery of network and cloud security ensuring SLA/SLO compliance, service availability, and capacity management.
• Lead major incident handling including triage, escalation, communications, post-incident reviews, and corrective action tracking.
• Operate Palo Alto security controls across network and Azure environments including NGFW, Panorama/Strata Cloud Manager, WildFire, URL Filtering, and segmentation tools.
• Govern security-related change management processes including risk assessment, approval, testing, deployment, and rollback procedures.
• Maintain observability through logging, alert tuning, dashboard creation, and noise reduction initiatives.
• Oversee vulnerability and configuration hygiene, managing prioritization, remediation coordination, validation, and periodic recertification.
• Operate core network and cloud security controls including firewalls/WAF, IDS/IPS, segmentation, ZTNA, and SASE solutions.
• Ensure audit readiness with appropriate evidence collection, control attestations, exceptions handling, and policy compliance.
• Maintain runbooks, SOPs, service documentation, and knowledge bases (KEDB) to support efficient operations and transitions.
• Champion continual service improvement and automation using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, and policy-as-code to enhance reliability and reduce manual toil.

Qualifications and Certifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or Information Technology preferred.
• Professional certifications such as PCNSE, CCNP/CCIE Security, CISSP, or CISM are advantageous.
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in cybersecurity, including at least 3 years in a leadership or supervisory role.

Additional Information

Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Employment type is full-time remote. Salary exceeds $100,000 annually. Cognizant values equal employment opportunities and requires successful candidates to undergo background checks.