AI Engineer with Akamai / Akamai Security Engineer

Position: AI Engineer with Akamai (OR) Akamai Security Engineer

Location: NYC, NY or Alpharetta, GA – on site 3 days a week

Duration: Long term

Please find the JD below:

WAF / Akamai Security Engineer

1. WAF Onboarding & Application Migration

·       Lead onboarding of internet-facing applications to Akamai WAF.

·       Work with application, DNS, load balancer, proxy, firewall, and QA teams to migrate applications into monitor/alert mode and ultimately deny mode.

·       Coordinate testing, rollout plans, traffic cutovers, validation, and rollback procedures.

2. WAF Policy Tuning & False Positive Analysis

·       Analyze production traffic and WAF events to identify false positives.

·       Tune security policies to reduce business impact while maintaining strong protection.

·       Review blocked requests, investigate application behavior, and create narrowly scoped exceptions when justified.

3. AI, LLM & API Security Support

·       Troubleshoot AI- and LLM-related traffic that triggers WAF protections, such as SQL injection controls.

·       Work with application teams and vendors to design compensating controls, header-based attestation mechanisms, and API-specific protections.

·       Evaluate emerging Akamai AI security capabilities, including AI-powered detections, Firewall for AI, bot identification, and agentic AI protections.

4. Security Event Monitoring & Threat Analysis

·       Review WAF, Bot Manager, DDoS, Client Reputation, and API Security events.

·       Analyze attack patterns and determine whether activity is malicious or legitimate.

·       Recommend policy improvements and mitigations based on observed threats.

5. Quarterly Security Reviews & Platform Upgrades

·       Conduct structured reviews of applications protected by Akamai.

·       Evaluate opportunities to move applications from monitoring to mitigation mode.

·       Perform quarterly WAF upgrades, policy reviews, and security-control tuning to keep protections aligned with current threat intelligence.

6. Incident Response & Troubleshooting

·       Assist with production incidents where application behavior changes after WAF enablement.

·       Investigate latency issues, traffic-routing problems, load-balancer interactions, client IP handling, surge queue events, and application outages.

·       Coordinate with Akamai engineering resources and internal teams to identify root causes and corrective actions.

7. Security Architecture & Design Consulting

·       Advise application teams on secure web architectures, OWASP protections, API security, bot mitigation, client reputation controls, and DDoS protection.

·       Provide guidance on best practices for onboarding, secure application design, and remediation of web vulnerabilities.

8. Program Management & Stakeholder Engagement

·       Partner with application owners, infrastructure teams, auditors, risk managers, and security leadership.

·       Track onboarding progress, risks, dependencies, and remediation activities through program governance and ticketing systems.

·       Present status updates, metrics, risks, and remediation plans to senior management.

9. Operational Metrics & Reporting

·       Produce dashboards and reporting covering:

o   WAF adoption

o   Deny-mode coverage

o   Bot mitigation effectiveness

o   API discovery

o   Security exceptions

o   Attack activity

·       Measure onboarding progress, control effectiveness, and risk reduction across the organization.

10. Vendor Liaison & Technology Roadmap Guidance

·       Act as the primary interface between the enterprise and Akamai.

·       Engage Akamai product teams on product defects, enhancement requests, AI roadmap discussions, policy recommendations, and complex troubleshooting.

·       Evaluate new Akamai capabilities and coordinate pilot deployments where appropriate.

Mandatory Experience

·       5+ years of Akamai experience

·       Akamai Kona Site Defender

·       Akamai Bot Manager

·       Akamai API Security

·       OWASP Top 10

·       Incident response experience

Preferred Experience

·       AI/LLM security

·       Akamai Firewall for AI

·       Enterprise-scale migration experience

·       Financial services experience