Cyber Engineer III API Security

The Senior Engineer Application & API Security is a key member of the E-WAAP team and serves as a technical lead for our Akamai-based web and API security platform. You will:

• Lead onboarding of new applications and APIs onto Akamai (WAF CDN bot and API security capabilities).
• Design and tune security policies to protect against OWASP Top 10 API abuse bots and DDoS while preserving performance and user experience.
• Partner with product teams developers and cloud teams to embed E-WAAP into CI/CD and DevSecOps workflows.

This role reports into the G5 Manager Application & API Security (E-WAAP) and will provide coaching and technical direction to G3 Engineers and G2/G3 Analysts as we in-source capabilities from our managed services provider.

Responsibilities & Accountabilities:

• Platform engineering & design
  • Lead the onboarding of new web and API workloads to Akamai from discovery and architecture review to staging validation and production cutover.
  • Design and implement WAF bot management DDoS and rate-limiting policies tailored to application risk profiles and business requirements.
  • Build reusable configuration patterns templates and reference architectures for common McDonalds application types (e.g. marketing sites e-commerce APIs partner integrations).
  • Use Akamai APIs automation frameworks and infrastructure-as-code (e.g. Terraform Python CI/CD pipelines) to manage configurations at scale.

• Security operations & tuning
  • Lead incident triage and investigations for WAF API and bot-related events; coordinate containment tuning and long-term fixes.
  • Analyze WAF and CDN logs to identify attacks false positives and evasion attempts; refine policies exception sets and custom rules.
  • Collaborate with Security Operations Threat Intelligence and product security teams to map emerging threats into new or updated rulesets.
  • Drive continuous improvement in detection quality block rates and false-positive reduction while maintaining performance SLAs.

• Dev & automation focus
  • Partner with developers to integrate Akamai security checks into CI/CD (e.g. automated policy promotions pre-prod validation jobs automated regression checks).
  • Develop internal tools and scripts (Python Bash TypeScript etc.) to streamline common workflows (policy cloning bulk updates configuration linting).
  • Provide technical requirements and guidance into product roadmaps for observability logging and security analytics.

• Governance metrics and leadership
  • Own platform health and risk metrics (coverage rule adoption false positives incident volume MTTR) and present them regularly to leadership and stakeholders.
  • Lead operational governance forums with product teams to review posture tuning backlog and upcoming changes.
  • Mentor and coach G3 Engineers and Analysts; provide guidance on investigations change reviews and documentation.
  • Contribute to and lead updates of SOPs intake processes runbooks and standards for Akamai and E-WAAP.

Qualifications :

• Bachelors degree in computer science Engineering Information Technology or equivalent experience.
• Knowledge of Agile software development process including application of Agile techniques and delivery practices and promoting adoption of Agile methodologies to secure outcome-driven mindset in product teams.
• Experience working with large-scale global high-availability platforms (CDN edge or cloud) where performance and latency are critical.
• Prior experience with Akamai APIs Terraform or other infrastructure-as-code tools for managing Akamai configurations at scale.
• Familiarity with SIEM/SOAR tools and log analysis for WAF and CDN events.
• Industry certifications in security or cloud (e.g. CISSP CCSP GIAC cloud provider security certifications).

#LI-Hybrid

Additional Information :

McDonalds is committed to providing qualified individuals with reasonable accommodations to perform the essential functions of their jobs. Additionally if you (or another applicant of whom you are aware) require assistance accessing or reading this job posting or otherwise seek assistance in the application process please contact  

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Nothing in this job posting or description should be construed as an offer or guarantee of employment. 

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time