How to become a Firewall Engineer?

[ysonon]

Hi Guys, I wanted some guidance on how can I become a Firewall Engineer. I have 3 years of Exp in IT but I had to left my Job in March 2025. Now I am trying to swicth my skill. I wanted to know that What are the things I need to learn before appplying for a job and how much time it will take to master it. I have started from Basics and so far I have learnt IP Addressing, Subnetting, Routing(Static, Dynamic, OSPF, BGP), Swicthing(ARP, Vlans, Inter VLan routing, HSRP, VRRP), ACLs, NAT(Static, Dynamic, PAT). I have started learning Fortigate from basics and I wanted to know is there anything else I should learn parallely? How much time will it take to land my first job as a firewall engineer. I am also thinking of learning Cloud in future and will dive into Cloud Security.

[anikolov]

Hello Ysonon,

I remember fondly when I entered the Network Security world in 2016. I started by listening to cisco CCNA course on CBT Nuggets from Jeremy Cioara. It was not just I was learning something what I liked, I also really liked how fun it was to learn from this guy. In the company we already had EVE-NG and I was doing GNS3 on my laptop and I was able to do the tryouts from Jeremy's lectures. Once I got better and started doing more tasks that were required from me as technical support, I started learning NSE4 from Fortinet (as the company where I worked is a Fortinet partner). It was a bit scary at that time, as I was more familiar with Cisco as a vendor, but since you know what you need to do, Fortinet products are very intuitive and easy to use.

Every employer nowadays wants a finished product. For starters GNS3 and a course for CCNA/NSE4 are good beginning in the Network Security dive. You might need also a bit of luck to be employed in a network security / technical support role, as the real learning curve starts when you are already working on a tickets/implementations.

I wish you good luck!

[mokelfo1]

Before you become a dedicated firewall engineer you must understand the fundamentals of networking to the "tee" So the answer to your overall question is get some network and firewall certificates. Like others have said. Only large corporations have dedicated firewall engineers

[filiaks1]

The training under https://training.fortinet.com/ is free so pass FCA and FCF certifications and even get free certs from fortinet! 

Cybersecurity Training for IT Professionals | Fortinet

You can even have a free trial license and there are free demos just see:

FortiGate-VM evaluation license recommendation to... - Fortinet Community

Outside of that Free Entry-Level Cybersecurity Training & Certification Exam | ISC2 is also free and Microsoft Certified: Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals - Certifications | Microsoft Le... is 50 dollars and there is training in youtube SC-900 Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals Study Cram V2 / Microsoft Security Compliance and Identity (SC-900) - Full Course PASS the Exam

You will not be still security engineer but you will be on the right track! Compitia Security + could be the next level but it is not cheap and if your company could pay the better!