Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Blue Coat Proxy Engineer

🎯 Role Definition

We are seeking an experienced Blue Coat Proxy Engineer (ProxySG / Secure Web Gateway Specialist) to design, deploy, tune, and support enterprise-grade web proxy infrastructure. The ideal candidate will have deep hands-on experience with Blue Coat (Symantec/Broadcom) ProxySG appliances and management consoles, strong HTTP/HTTPS and SSL/TLS expertise, and the ability to collaborate across networking, security, and application teams to secure and optimize web traffic. This role requires a problem-solver who can lead proxy architecture, policy design, integrations (AD/LDAP, ICAP, DLP, SIEM), and support 24x7 production environments while documenting and automating operational tasks.

Keywords: Blue Coat, ProxySG, Secure Web Gateway, SSL inspection, HTTPS decryption, PAC/WPAD, ICAP, Blue Coat Management Center (BCMC), Blue Coat Reporter, Proxy policies, Proxy clustering, web proxy engineer.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Network Engineer with proxy or firewall experience
Security Operations Engineer (SOC / Proxy support)
Systems Engineer with HTTP/SSL operational background

Advancement To:

Senior Network Security Engineer / Secure Web Gateway Architect
Network Security Architect / Cloud Security Architect
Technical Lead or Manager — Network & Security Infrastructure

Lateral Moves:

Cloud Network Engineer (proxy and proxy-as-a-service)
DLP / Data Protection Engineer
SIEM / Security Analytics Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Design, implement, and maintain Blue Coat ProxySG (physical and virtual) appliances and virtual instances, ensuring secure and highly available deployments across on-premises and cloud environments.
Configure and manage Blue Coat policy objects, web filtering and URL categorization, content adaptation, and application control to enforce corporate acceptable use and threat mitigation policies.
Implement and maintain SSL/TLS interception (HTTPS decryption) flows on ProxySG devices including certificate lifecycle management, certificate profiling, SNI handling, OCSP/CRL validation and compatibility with TLS 1.2/1.3.
Integrate ProxySG with Active Directory/LDAP for authentication and SSO (NTLM, Kerberos, passthrough), ensuring correct user mapping, delegation, and secure credential flows for policy enforcement.
Configure and operate Blue Coat Management Center (BCMC) and Blue Coat Reporter for centralized configuration, logging, reporting, trending, policy audits and capacity planning.
Design and operate ProxySG high-availability clusters, load balancing, proxy chaining, WCCP and L7 routing policies for resilient, scalable web proxy infrastructure.
Integrate ProxySG with ICAP and third-party content scanning servers (antivirus, DLP, malware sandboxing) to enable inline content inspection and enforcement workflows.
Tune cache settings, proxy performance profiles, refresh logic and content adaptation rules to optimize latency, bandwidth usage and user experience.
Create, test and maintain PAC files, WPAD configurations and client proxy auto-configurations for appropriate client routing and failover behavior.
Perform deep troubleshooting of HTTP/HTTPS flows using packet captures, tcpdump, SSL key analysis, Wireshark, and proxy logs to resolve complex user and application access issues.
Execute firmware upgrades, security patching, vulnerability remediation and lifecycle management for ProxySG appliances and virtual instances with minimal service disruption.
Maintain and extend authentication and authorization integrations (RADIUS, SAML, OAuth, LDAP) for specialized application access and reporting requirements.
Develop and maintain automation scripts and tools using Python, Bash, or REST APIs to automate configuration drift detection, bulk policy deployments and reporting tasks.
Integrate proxy logs and meta-data with SIEM solutions (e.g., Splunk) using syslog/CEF/JSON, develop parsers and dashboards for security monitoring, incident detection and forensics.
Establish enterprise runbooks, standard operating procedures, configuration baselines and change control practices specific to ProxySG management and policy changes.
Provide 24x7 on-call rotation support for proxy incidents and escalations; coordinate cross-functional incident response with NOC, SOC, and application owners.
Lead proxy migration and consolidation projects (e.g., replacing legacy proxies, migrating to ProxySG virtual appliances or cloud gateway solutions) with clear migration plans, testing and rollback strategies.
Support reverse proxy and secure publishing for internal web applications where ProxySG is used as an application gateway or SSL termination point.
Conduct periodic security hardening, configuration audits and compliance checks (PCI, HIPAA, internal policies) for proxy infrastructure and associated logging.
Work with application teams to onboard new applications through the proxy, define exceptions, and apply precise policy rules to minimize business disruption while protecting users.
Monitor health and capacity of proxy clusters via SNMP, NetFlow, and management API metrics; plan for capacity growth and cost optimization.
Provide training, documentation and knowledge transfer for Tier 1/Tier 2 support teams on ProxySG operations, policy creation, and troubleshooting.
Evaluate emerging Secure Web Gateway features, CASB integration points, cloud proxy offerings and propose roadmap improvements for web security posture.
Maintain an inventory of SSL certificates and keys used in interception and application publishing; coordinate renewals and certificate authority management.
Collaborate with network engineering to design WCCP, routing and NAT strategies that align proxy placement with traffic flows, cloud on-ramps and edge services.

Secondary Functions

Create and maintain detailed operational documentation, diagrams and runbooks for proxy architecture, failover scenarios and rollback plans.
Support audits and provide evidence for compliance reviews including proxy logs, policy change histories and access control mappings.
Support capacity planning and budgeting exercises for proxy infrastructure lifecycle and replacement cycles.
Participate in security tabletop exercises and penetration testing remediation for web gateway configurations.
Assist in vendor evaluation, RFP responses and proof-of-concept testing for alternative proxy or secure web gateway solutions.
Collaborate with cloud architects to design proxy strategies for hybrid workloads, ensuring secure, consistent policy enforcement for SaaS and IaaS workloads.
Mentor junior team members on web proxy concepts including HTTP headers, caching semantics, and SSL/TLS flows.
Participate in cross-functional change advisory board (CAB) meetings to review and authorize proxy-related changes.
Implement telemetry and observability improvements to provide richer analytics from proxy events for machine learning and automation pipelines.
Support ad hoc business requests for white-listing, traffic exceptions, and short-term bypasses while ensuring proper justification and expiry.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Deep hands-on experience with Blue Coat / Symantec / Broadcom ProxySG appliances and Blue Coat Management Center (BCMC).
Strong knowledge of HTTP/HTTPS internals, headers, cookies, caching semantics and proxy behavior.
Expertise in SSL/TLS interception (HTTPS decryption), certificate management, PKI integration and TLS debugging.
Experience configuring and managing authentication integrations (Active Directory/LDAP, Kerberos, NTLM, SAML).
Experience with ICAP integration and content adaptation workflows; familiarity with DLP and antivirus inline scanning.
Proven ability to design and operate HA clustering, load balancing and WCCP integration for proxies.
Log management and SIEM integration skills (Splunk, ELK) — syslog, CEF, JSON formats and parsers.
Proficiency with packet capture tools and protocol analysis using Wireshark, tcpdump, and proxy trace logs.
Scripting and automation skills (Python, Bash, PowerShell) and familiarity with REST APIs for management automation.
Networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, routing, NAT, VLANs, DNS and experience coordinating with network vendors.
Experience with virtualized proxy deployments (VMware, KVM) and cloud deployments (AWS, Azure) for proxy/secure web gateway.
Familiarity with PAC/WPAD scripting and browser proxy configuration management.
Experience maintaining proxy upgrade cycles, firmware patching, and appliance lifecycle management.
Familiarity with regulatory/compliance frameworks (PCI, HIPAA, SOC2) as they relate to web proxy logging and retention.
Troubleshooting and incident response skills with documented troubleshooting methodologies and runbooks.

Soft Skills

Strong communication skills: explain technical tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders and write clear runbooks and reports.
Collaborative mindset: work effectively across networking, security, application and cloud teams.
Problem-solving under pressure: effective decision-making during production incidents and escalations.
Project management and organization: plan migrations, upgrades and maintenance windows with minimal business impact.
Mentoring and knowledge transfer: train junior engineers and improve team capabilities.
Attention to detail for policy rule design, certificate management and compliance evidence.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a technical field; industry certifications such as CCNP, CISSP, GIAC, or vendor-specific networking/security certs are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science
Information Security / Cybersecurity
Network Engineering
Systems Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years of hands-on experience managing web proxy or secure web gateway infrastructure; at least 3 years specifically with Blue Coat / ProxySG strongly preferred.

Preferred:

5+ years of enterprise proxy/secure web gateway experience including SSL/TLS interception, policy design, HA clustering and ICAP/DLP integrations.
Experience in hybrid environments (on-prem + cloud) and supporting SaaS applications through proxy solutions.
Demonstrated experience with automation, SIEM integration and cross-functional incident leadership.

If you need this tailored to a specific seniority level (Junior, Senior, Lead) or to include interview questions, KPIs or an ATS-optimized summary, tell me which focus and I’ll adapt the job specification.