15 years of technical experience on Checkpoint or Palo Alto firewalls
Expert-level hands-on experience with Check Point (GAiA, SmartConsole, VSX, clustering/HA, Threat Prevention blades, VPN) and Palo Alto (PAN-OS, Panorama, App-ID, User-ID, GlobalProtect, Threat/URL/WildFire profiles)
Advanced rule-based management: policy design, rule optimization, cleanup, and migration between platforms
Strong troubleshooting skills for L3–L7 issues (routing, NAT, VPN/IPsec, SSL decryption, application identification), including deep packet analysis and log interpretation
Proven experience working with both physical firewall chassis (installation, cabling, hardware upgrades, RMA procedures) and virtualized firewall environments (VSX for Check Point, VM-Series for Palo Alto, multi-tenancy, resource allocation)
Experience with high-availability architectures, upgrades, and patching for both platforms
Familiarity with automation and scripting (Python preferred) for policy deployment, auditing, and reporting
Integration of firewalls with supporting systems (logging, monitoring, SIEM, authentication sources)
Solid understanding of network protocols (TCP/IP, BGP, OSPF, VRF, MPLS, GRE, IPsec)