Freelance Lead Deployment Engineer – Firewall Migration | Fortinet & Check Point

We are looking for an experienced Lead Deployment Engineer to lead enterprise firewall migration activities, primarily involving Check Point to Fortinet FortiGate environments.

The ideal candidate should have strong hands-on expertise with FortiGate, Check Point, firewall policy migration, VPNs, NAT, HA, Forti Manager, and Cisco networking, along with the ability to provide technical leadership during deployment and production rollouts.

Location: Remote

Engagement: Part-Time | Freelance/Contract

Experience: 5+ Years

Key Responsibilities

• Lead teams responsible for Check Point to Fortinet firewall migration activities.

• Oversee deployment, configuration, optimization, and troubleshooting of FortiGate firewalls.

• Analyze existing Check Point firewall policies, VPNs, NAT configurations, and security architecture.

• Develop and execute migration plans, including testing, validation, cutover, and rollback strategies.

• Lead network segmentation and firewall security modernization initiatives.

• Guide deployment engineers during implementation and troubleshooting activities.

• Collaborate with NetDevOps and SRE teams to improve automation and operational processes.

• Participate in maintenance windows, change management, and production rollouts.

• Ensure migration activities comply with enterprise security and compliance requirements.

• Provide technical mentorship, escalation support, and leadership to deployment teams.

🛠️ Required Skills

✅ 5+ years of Network Deployment / Network Security Engineering experience

✅ Extensive hands-on experience with Fortinet FortiGate

✅ Strong experience administering Check Point Firewalls

✅ Proven experience leading firewall migration projects

✅ Strong Cisco Routing & Switching knowledge

✅ Experience with IPSec, SSL VPN, and Site-to-Site VPN

✅ Hands-on experience with FortiManager and centralized policy management

✅ Strong understanding of firewall policy analysis and migration

✅ Experience with High Availability (HA) firewall deployments

✅ Excellent troubleshooting, communication, and technical leadership skills

⭐ Preferred Skills

• Fortinet NSE 4 / NSE 5 / NSE 7 certification

• CCNP / CCNP Security certification

• Arista Networking experience

• Python / Network Automation experience

• Financial Services / Banking domain experience