Top 12 Network Manager Skills to Put on Your Resume

In today's volatile tech sprawl, a Network Manager’s toolkit decides whether systems hum or hiccup. Hiring managers skim fast, so a resume that spotlights real network management skills—platform depth, protocol mastery, cloud savvy, automation chops—can tilt the table. Show you can steer sprawling infrastructure, harden it, and keep traffic crisp when everything surges at once.

Network Manager Skills

1. Cisco IOS
2. Juniper Junos
3. BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)
4. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)
5. IPv6
6. VMware NSX
7. Wireshark
8. SolarWinds
9. Python (for network automation)
10. Ansible
11. AWS Networking
12. Microsoft Azure Networking

1. Cisco IOS

Cisco IOS (Internetwork Operating System) runs on most Cisco routers and switches and provides the command-line interface, management controls, routing, switching, and security features that make Cisco networks tick.

Why It's Important

IOS is the backbone for Cisco devices. It’s where policy becomes packets—reliable operations, secure access, and consistent configuration, all in one place.

How to Improve Cisco IOS Skills

Make it faster, safer, calmer under pressure:

1. Update on a schedule: Track recommended releases and patch known issues promptly.

2. Harden configs: Lock down management planes, disable unused services, enforce AAA, and encrypt in-flight control traffic.

3. Prioritize traffic: Build QoS policies for real business flows. Shape, police, and queue with intent.

4. Standardize templates: Golden configs, baseline banners, consistent logging and NTP. Version-control them.

5. Measure everything: NetFlow/IPFIX, SNMP, telemetry. Alarms that wake you only when it matters.

6. Layered security: ACLs, zone-based firewall, VPN where appropriate, and strict device access policies.

7. Practice: Lab changes, test rollbacks, and document quirks per platform.

Small disciplines compound—your network gets quieter, safer, easier to run.

How to Display Cisco IOS Skills on Your Resume

2. Juniper Junos

Junos is Juniper’s single OS across routers, switches, and security devices—clean separation of control and forwarding, atomic commits, strong automation hooks.

Why It's Important

Unified behavior and predictable commits reduce risk. One syntax across platforms means faster rollout and fewer surprises.

How to Improve Juniper Junos Skills

1. Stay current: Plan upgrades; track recommended versions and fix trains.

2. Automate: Use PyEZ, Ansible, and Junos commit scripts for repeatable changes and drift control.

3. Secure by default: Lock down management, apply security policies, use encrypted services, and rotate credentials.

4. Traffic discipline: QoS, firewall filters, schedulers—shape flows with intent and verify with RPM/TWAMP.

5. Use commit check/confirmed: Reduce outage risk with proven commit workflows and rollbacks.

6. Build health views: System alarms, event policies, structured logs, and telemetry for proactive detection.

Operational calm comes from consistent patterns—Junos is built for that.

How to Display Juniper Junos Skills on Your Resume

3. BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)

BGP moves reachability between autonomous systems, picks paths, and keeps the internet stitched together. It’s policy more than protocol—your choices shape your routes.

Why It's Important

Without BGP, there’s no scalable interdomain routing. For enterprises and service providers, it’s how external connectivity, multi-homing, and intersite policies actually happen.

How to Improve BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) Skills

1. Filter ruthlessly: Inbound and outbound. Stop leaks. Deny bogons. Only announce what you own.

2. Aggregate: Summarize where possible to shrink tables and steady convergence.

3. Design with reflectors: Route reflectors or confederations tame iBGP sprawl in larger topologies.

4. Protect sessions: TCP MD5/AEAD where supported, TTL security, and dampen flaps. MaxPrefix on both sides.

5. RPKI first: Publish ROAs, validate origins, and adopt policy to drop invalids. Monitor coverage.

6. Use communities: Tag routes for selective export, prepends, local-pref tweaks, and traffic engineering.

7. Telemetry and alerting: Watch adjacencies, churn, path changes, and prefix counts. Detect anomalies fast.

8. Peering hygiene: Clear policies, documented IRR entries, and periodic audits with peers.

9. Capacity discipline: Track FIB/RIB size, memory, and CPU headroom; plan upgrades before the wall.

10. Practice incidents: Simulate leaks, hijacks, and path withdrawals. Drill your response.

BGP rewards caution and clarity. Messy policy equals messy days.

How to Display BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) Skills on Your Resume

4. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)

MPLS forwards by labels, not long lookups. That means tighter traffic engineering, VPN separation, and predictable paths through complex backbones.

Why It's Important

It delivers QoS and isolation at scale. Mission-critical apps get the treatment they deserve; networks stay orderly under load.

How to Improve MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) Skills

1. Plan headroom: Track traffic by class. Reserve buffers. Avoid stealth congestion.

2. QoS end-to-end: Consistent marking, queues, and drops across the entire LSP path.

3. Redundancy that reacts: Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) and fast reroute to keep sessions alive through failures.

4. Traffic Engineering: Steer LSPs with constraints. Balance links, protect primaries.

5. Harden control planes: Rate-limit LDP/RSVP, protect labels, and audit neighbors.

6. Instrument the core: Per-class performance monitoring, LSP ping/trace, and synthetic probes.

7. Upskill the team: Shared mental models—label stack behavior, penultimate hop popping, VPNv4/v6 nuances.

Engineered paths beat wishful thinking.

How to Display MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) Skills on Your Resume

5. IPv6

IPv6 brings a vast address space, streamlined autoconfiguration, and improvements that modernize routing and security posture. The world ran out of IPv4; growth rides on v6.

Why It's Important

Address abundance, cleaner subnetting, and end-to-end reachability. Fewer NAT headaches. More sustainable network design.

How to Improve IPv6 Skills

1. Have a plan: Dual-stack where feasible, staged rollouts, and defined cutovers. Document addressing, DNS, and routing policies.

2. Train the team: Neighbor discovery, SLAAC vs. DHCPv6, privacy extensions, RA guard, and ICMPv6 essentials.

3. Verify gear: Hardware, firmware, security tools—confirm feature parity and performance on IPv6.

4. Security specifics: RA guard, DHCPv6 guard, uRPF, first-hop security, and proper ICMPv6 handling (don’t break PMTUD).

5. Monitor with v6 in mind: Flow records, logs, and dashboards that understand IPv6 fields and volume.

6. Work with providers: Native v6 transit, tested tunnels only when necessary, and public-facing services enabled with AAAA and DNSSEC where applicable.

Don’t bolt IPv6 on—design it like you mean it.

How to Display IPv6 Skills on Your Resume

6. VMware NSX

NSX virtualizes networking and security—logical switches, routers, firewalls, and overlays as software, not boxes. Micro-segmentation without rack rewiring.

Why It's Important

Security follows workloads, automation becomes natural, and network changes move at cloud speed.

How to Improve VMware NSX Skills

1. Standardize on NSX‑T: Align on the current release train; use the migration coordinator if you’re coming from NSX‑V.

2. Design for intent: Clear tier-0/tier-1 roles, route redistribution rules, and overlay/underlay boundaries.

3. Micro-segmentation that matters: Start with high-value app tiers. Tight rules, minimal any-any, measurable blast radius cuts.

4. Automate APIs: Use NSX REST APIs and infrastructure-as-code for repeatable deployments and policy governance.

5. Performance tuning: Right-size edge nodes, optimize uplinks, and verify MTU end-to-end for overlays.

6. Security integration: Tie in workload protection tools for detection and response; keep signatures and policies fresh.

Virtual networks move fast—document guardrails, then let automation do the heavy lifting.

How to Display VMware NSX Skills on Your Resume

7. Wireshark

Wireshark is the microscope. It captures and dissects packets so you can find the truth when logs hedge and dashboards gloss over the ugly bits.

Why It's Important

Deep visibility. Root-cause clarity. Protocol fluency that turns hunches into fixes.

How to Improve Wireshark Skills

1. Stay updated: New decoders, fixes, and performance gains arrive often.

2. Filters like second nature: Craft surgical display and capture filters; save profiles for recurring hunts.

3. Prefer capture at the edge: Use dumpcap for high-rate capture, increase buffers, and avoid packet drops.

4. Decrypt where allowed: Load keys for TLS where you control endpoints; always respect policy and privacy.

5. Build protocol muscle: TCP analysis flags, DNS quirks, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, QUIC, and the usual suspects.

6. Automate the boring: Tshark for scripts, reusable filters, and batch analyses.

7. Practice on noise: Real captures are messy—timing issues, retransmits, asymmetric paths. Learn in the rough.

Packets don’t lie—learn to listen fast.

How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume

8. SolarWinds

SolarWinds provides monitoring, configuration management, and observability for networks and systems. Dashboards to see, alerts to act, automation for the grind.

Why It's Important

When visibility is missing, downtime lingers. A well-tuned platform shortens mean time to detect and fix.

How to Improve SolarWinds Skills

1. Patch quickly: Keep the platform current—features improve, risks shrink.

2. Harden the stack: Least privilege, network segmentation for the server, MFA, and strict API credentials. Assume the platform is high value and protect it that way.

3. Tight discovery: Curate device roles, custom properties, and polling intervals. Fewer false alarms, better signal.

4. Automate configs: Scheduled backups, compliance checks, and drift detection for network devices.

5. Alert only what matters: Thresholds tied to SLOs, escalation policies, and maintenance windows to prevent alert storms.

6. Prove value: Executive reports that track availability, capacity trends, and incident reduction over time.

Treat the monitoring platform like production—because it is.

How to Display SolarWinds Skills on Your Resume

9. Python (for network automation)

Python glues networks together—fast scripts for config changes, audits, validations, and data wrangling across multi-vendor fleets.

Why It's Important

Repeatability beats heroics. Python removes fat-finger errors, speeds rollouts, and makes compliance checks effortless.

How to Improve Python (for network automation) Skills

1. Master the core: Functions, modules, virtual environments, testing, packaging.

2. Know networking: Protocols, device models, state vs. config, idempotency concepts.

3. Use the right libraries: Netmiko, NAPALM, pyATS/Genie, Paramiko, Requests, Jinja2, Rich for output.

4. Adopt IaC patterns: Source control, code reviews, linting, CI pipelines, secrets management.

5. Build validators: Pre-change checks, post-change asserts, and snapshot diffs that catch drift.

6. Learn by doing: Small tools that solve real pain—inventory sync, intent-to-config rendering, compliance scans.

Good automation feels boring. That’s the point.

How to Display Python (for network automation) Skills on Your Resume

10. Ansible

Ansible orchestrates configuration and change across fleets—YAML playbooks, declarative intent, and agentless execution that’s easy to audit.

Why It's Important

Consistency at scale. One play pushes policy everywhere the same way—no drift, less toil.

How to Improve Ansible Skills

1. Structure with roles and collections: Reusable components, clear variables, and versioned dependencies.

2. Dynamic inventory: Generate device lists from CMDB, cloud APIs, or source of truth systems.

3. Make it resilient: Error handling, retries, check mode, and diff mode to preview impact.

4. Control at scale: Use AWX or Ansible Automation Platform for RBAC, scheduling, and audits.

5. Performance tuning: Forks, SSH multiplexing, persistent connections, and strategy plugins.

6. Security: Ansible Vault for secrets, scoped credentials, and signed content where available.

7. Test everything: Molecule, linting, and CI gates before production runs.

Playbooks are policy. Treat them like code, not notes.

How to Display Ansible Skills on Your Resume

11. AWS Networking

AWS Networking spans VPCs, routing, private connectivity, load balancing, global distribution, and guardrails that keep cloud networks flexible and safe.

Why It's Important

Cloud architectures live or die by network design. Done right, you get scale, reliability, and cost control without drama.

How to Improve AWS Networking Skills

1. Design VPCs with intent: CIDR planning, subnet tiers, NAT strategy, and clear egress rules.

2. Use Transit Gateway: Centralize VPC-to-VPC and hybrid connectivity; reduce peering sprawl.

3. Balance globally: Elastic Load Balancing for layers 4/7; CloudFront and Route 53 for latency-based routing and resilience.

4. Harden perimeters: Security groups and NACLs with least privilege, VPC endpoints for private service access, WAF where exposed.

5. Private links where possible: Interface endpoints and PrivateLink to keep sensitive traffic off the internet.

6. Direct Connect when needed: Predictable throughput and lower jitter for hybrid flows.

7. Observability: VPC Flow Logs, CloudWatch metrics and alarms, CloudTrail for governance, and reachability analyzers.

8. Multi-AZ by default: For critical stacks, consider multi-Region patterns with cautious data replication.

9. Cost discipline: Watch cross-AZ/Region transfer, NAT data charges, idle NLB/ALB, and oversized instances.

10. Automate: IaC with versioned templates, guardrails via policies, and pre-deployment validations.

Cloud networks aren’t static—bake governance into the design.

How to Display AWS Networking Skills on Your Resume

12. Microsoft Azure Networking

Azure Networking provides virtual networks, gateways, private connectivity, global front doors, firewalls, and monitoring to shape cloud traffic with control and speed.

Why It's Important

Global reach, enterprise guardrails, and design patterns that scale cleanly across subscriptions and regions.

How to Improve Microsoft Azure Networking Skills

1. VNet architecture: Hub-and-spoke or Virtual WAN for large estates; align address plans and route tables from day one.

2. Traffic steering: Azure Front Door for global entry, Traffic Manager for DNS-based distribution, and load balancers per tier.

3. Defense in depth: NSGs at subnets and NICs, Azure Firewall for central policy, DDoS protection on public surfaces.

4. Private everywhere: Private Link and service endpoints to keep service access off the public internet.

5. ExpressRoute when it counts: Stable, private hybrid connectivity with clear redundancy models.

6. Watch the wire: Network Watcher, Connection Monitor, flow logs, and traffic analytics for proactive detection.

7. Governance: Azure Policy, Blueprints, tags, and RBAC to keep sprawl in check.

Treat the subscription like a data center—same rigor, faster moves.

How to Display Microsoft Azure Networking Skills on Your Resume