Due to the nature of the role, willingness to participate in on-call/weekend/evening support is preferred.

The Akamai Security Specialist is responsible for protecting PNC’s external application footprint through the design, implementation, and management of Akamai security controls. This role focuses on defending against advanced threats including automated attacks, bot activity, and API abuse, while ensuring optimal performance and customer experience across digital platforms.

Core Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and maintain Akamai security controls, including Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Bot Manager policies

• Monitor and analyze traffic patterns to identify anomalous behavior, malicious automation, and emerging threats

• Tune and enforce security policies to proactively block unauthorized access, data harvesting, and application abuse

• Partner with Security Operations and incident response teams to investigate, escalate, and remediate security events

• Develop and maintain detection logic, playbooks, and standardized procedures for incident response and policy management

• Support onboarding new applications by defining and validating security configurations, API protections, and endpoint coverage

• Continuously optimize Akamai configurations to align with evolving threat intelligence and attack techniques

• Validate protections on high-risk business functions such as authentication flows, account management, and transactional APIs

• Ensure visibility, monitoring, and reporting capabilities support operational, audit, and regulatory requirements

• Contribute to documentation, knowledge transfer, and process standardization across the Akamai Security team

Preferred Technical Skills:

• Akamai Security Suite (e.g., Kona Site Defender / WAF, Bot Manager, API Protection)

• SIEM and monitoring platforms

• Web protocols (HTTP/S), networking fundamentals, and application architecture

• Security tooling supports traffic inspection, rule tuning, and incident response

• Ticketing and workflow systems (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira) for operational tracking and onboarding activities

Preferred Skills & Experience:

• 3+ years in cybersecurity (application, network, or perimeter security)

• Direct experience with Akamai Security Suite products and policy management (e.g., Kona Site Defender / WAF, Bot Manager, API Protection)

• Experience working in Security Operations, Attack Surface Management, or application protection environment

• Strong knowledge of web security (OWASP Top 10), HTTP/S, and application architecture

• Strong understanding of web application security and common attack vectors (e.g., OWASP Top 10)

• Experience analyzing network traffic, logs, and security events to identify threats

• Ability to interpret and apply threat intelligence to security controls and detection strategies

• Knowledge of API security and protection against automated and high-speed attack techniques

• Familiarity with cloud and web-based application architectures

• Experience defending against automated threats, bots, or scraping activity

• Familiarity with financial services or highly regulated environments

• Knowledge of Zero Trust concepts and modern application security frameworks

• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to balance security enforcement and customer experience

• Effective communication skills with the ability to collaborate across security, infrastructure, and application teams