Top 12 Network Operations Engineer Skills to Put on Your Resume

Networks never sleep. A Network Operations Engineer keeps them steady—fast, observable, resilient. Your resume should carry the right mix of skills that prove you can run, fix, and sharpen complex systems under pressure, without drama when things wobble.

Network Operations Engineer Skills

1. Cisco IOS
2. Juniper Junos
3. BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)
4. OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)
5. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)
6. IPv6
7. SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)
8. QoS (Quality of Service)
9. Wireshark
10. Python (for automation)
11. VMware NSX
12. AWS Networking

1. Cisco IOS

Cisco IOS (and IOS XE) powers most Cisco routers and many switches, handling routing, switching, security, and management. It’s the daily canvas where configurations live and outages are tamed.

Why It's Important

It’s the operational backbone for device control—configuring paths, securing access, and observing behavior—so uptime and performance aren’t left to chance.

How to Improve Cisco IOS Skills

1. Stay current: Track a stable release train, maintain golden images, and plan maintenance windows with rollback options.

2. Standardize configs: Use templates, remove legacy features, adopt secure defaults, and enforce consistent naming and interface policies.

3. Harden access: Enforce AAA (TACACS+/RADIUS), SSHv2, role-based CLI, secure SNMPv3, and control-plane policing; lock down management interfaces and source IPs.

4. Improve observability: Enable NetFlow/IPFIX, syslog with structured fields, SNMPv3, and model-driven telemetry; baseline normal behavior.

5. Apply QoS: Classify/mark at the edge, shape or police where needed, and verify queues under load.

6. Mind resources: Watch CPU, memory, TCAM, and flash space; prune crash files and old images.

7. Automate safely: Use NETCONF/RESTCONF, Ansible/Nornir, and Git-backed change control; test in lab and use configuration replace/rollback.

How to Display Cisco IOS Skills on Your Resume

2. Juniper Junos

Junos OS runs across Juniper routers, switches, and security platforms. A single, consistent OS with readable configuration hierarchy and powerful commit/rollback.

Why It's Important

Reliability through consistency. Operational clarity. Fast troubleshooting with commits, diffs, and rollbacks that keep change risky but controlled.

How to Improve Juniper Junos Skills

1. Master the hierarchy: Understand candidate vs active config, groups and apply-groups, daemons, and routing-instances.

2. Use commit tools: Commit confirmed, compare, rescue, and rollbacks for safe changes.

3. Automate: Lean on NETCONF, PyEZ, Ansible, or Nornir; build idempotent templates and validate state post-change.

4. Operational checks: Event policies, RPM probes, and real-time monitoring for liveness and performance.

5. Security: Lock management access, use firewall filters and CoPP equivalents, and segment with routing-instances.

6. Hands-on: Practice in lab topologies (virtual or physical) and simulate failure, convergence, and upgrades.

How to Display Juniper Junos Skills on Your Resume

3. BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)

BGP steers traffic between autonomous systems, picks paths at internet scale, and drives policy decisions that can make latency vanish—or explode.

Why It's Important

It’s the control plane of the public internet and many private WANs, dictating reachability, resilience, and cost.

How to Improve BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) Skills

1. Secure the edge: Enforce RPKI origin validation (RTR servers), strict prefix and AS_PATH filters, max-prefix, GTSM/TTL security, and session passwords. Track BGPsec developments.

2. Scale cleanly: Use route reflectors, cluster IDs, add-paths where helpful, and dampening with care.

3. Engineer traffic: Shape with communities, local-pref, MED, and AS-path prepending; document policies per neighbor.

4. Converge faster: Deploy BFD for liveness, tune keepalives/hold timers prudently, enable graceful restart where appropriate.

5. Observe continuously: Export BMP to collectors, watch flap rates and withdrawals, alert on unexpected path changes.

6. Peering hygiene: Maintain accurate ROAs and IRR objects, publish clear peering policies, and keep contact data fresh.

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

4. OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)

OSPF is a link-state IGP. It computes shortest paths quickly, scales with areas, and hums along quietly when designed with intent.

Why It's Important

Stable, fast convergence inside your domain keeps apps snappy and outages contained.

How to Improve OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) Skills

1. Design a hierarchy: Use multiple areas, keep LSDBs small, and restrict flooding scope.

2. Tune the edges: Set network types correctly, align MTUs, manage DR/BDR elections, and adjust hello/dead timers thoughtfully.

3. Influence paths: Set interface costs consistently; summarize at area borders; minimize external routes where you can.

4. Area types: Leverage stub and NSSA areas to cut LSA noise.

5. Security: Use authentication everywhere—MD5 or HMAC where supported for OSPFv2; OSPFv3 with IPsec. Limit adjacencies on untrusted links.

6. Convergence: Add BFD for rapid failure detection and throttle LSAs to avoid storms.

How to Display OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) Skills on Your Resume

5. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)

MPLS labels push traffic through engineered paths without long IP lookups. It enables fast reroute, VPNs, and deterministic handling across a core.

Why It's Important

You get predictable performance, scalable VPN services, and robust failover to keep SLAs intact.

How to Improve MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) Skills

1. Modernize control: Prefer Segment Routing (SR-MPLS) where possible; otherwise keep LDP stable and consistent.

2. Engineer paths: Use RSVP-TE or SR-TE for explicit routing and bandwidth guarantees.

3. Speed up failover: Deploy TI-LFA or FRR to cut loss during link or node failures.

4. Verify data plane: Use LSP ping/trace to validate continuity and path symmetry.

5. QoS end-to-end: Map DSCP to MPLS TC/EXP, honor PHBs, and police or shape at edges.

6. Protect planes: Secure control and management planes; rate-limit and ACL label protocols.

7. Audit regularly: Check label allocation, redundancy, and TE constraints; test failure scenarios in a lab.

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

6. IPv6

IPv6 replaces address scarcity with abundance. Cleaner aggregation, streamlined operations, and space for every sensor, server, and oddball appliance.

Why It's Important

Growth without NAT contortions. Better routing. A path to IPv6-only networks that are simpler and often safer.

How to Improve IPv6 Skills

1. Plan the space: Allocate on nibble boundaries, keep summaries tidy, and document prefixes and lifecycles.

2. Transition wisely: Start dual-stack; move to IPv6-only with NAT64/DNS64 or 464XLAT when apps are ready. Avoid legacy 6to4/ISATAP.

3. Strengthen security: Enforce RA Guard and DHCPv6 Guard, deploy uRPF, write real IPv6 ACLs (don’t mirror v4 blindly), and monitor neighbor caches.

4. Control addressing: Pick SLAAC, DHCPv6, or both to fit operations and auditing. Mind privacy extensions on clients.

5. Observe and test: Ensure tools fully support IPv6, enable flow logs, and run parity tests with IPv4 paths.

6. QoS mindful: Use DSCP consistently; the flow label can help but isn’t magic—validate behavior.

How to Display IPv6 Skills on Your Resume

7. SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)

SNMP collects counters and states from network devices and can send traps or informs when things go sideways.

Why It's Important

It’s the common denominator for device monitoring and alerting across mixed vendors and generations.

How to Improve SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) Skills

1. Prefer SNMPv3: Use authPriv with strong ciphers; disable v1/v2c where feasible.

2. Limit exposure: Bind to management VRFs, restrict sources with ACLs, and rate-limit requests.

3. Be selective: Poll only required OIDs, use bulkwalks, and choose sensible intervals to avoid device strain.

4. Harden credentials: Rotate users/keys, avoid default communities, and audit manager lists.

5. Modernize telemetry: Consider model-driven streaming telemetry (gNMI/NETCONF) alongside or instead of SNMP where supported.

How to Display SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) Skills on Your Resume

8. QoS (Quality of Service)

QoS classifies, marks, and queues traffic so critical flows get priority and noisy neighbors don’t steal the show.

Why It's Important

Predictability under load. Apps stay usable, voice is clear, and SLAs remain real when links saturate.

How to Improve QoS (Quality of Service) Skills

1. Define classes: Identify business-critical traffic, bulk data, control, and best-effort. Keep classes few and clear.

2. Mark at the edge: Trust only where appropriate; set DSCP/CoS early and carry markings end-to-end.

3. Queue with intent: Use LLQ/priority queues sparingly, allocate bandwidth fairly, and enable WRED where it makes sense.

4. Shape vs police: Shape outbound to smooth bursts; police only when necessary and predictable.

5. Measure constantly: Verify queue drops, latency, and jitter under realistic load; adjust, then verify again.

How to Display QoS (Quality of Service) Skills on Your Resume

9. Wireshark

Wireshark exposes packets in living color. It’s the magnifying glass for strange latency, broken handshakes, and chatty apps.

Why It's Important

When logs are vague and counters lie, packets tell the truth. Root cause becomes visible.

How to Improve Wireshark Skills

1. Filter fluency: Master capture filters (BPF) vs display filters; isolate the signal fast.

2. Profiles and colors: Build per-scenario profiles with custom columns and coloring rules to spot anomalies at a glance.

3. Capture smart: Use ring buffers, accurate timestamps, and disable name resolution during capture to cut noise.

4. Command-line power: Leverage TShark, mergecap, and editcap for automation and large traces.

5. Decrypt when allowed: Load keys for TLS (or key logs) in controlled test environments to inspect app flows.

6. Validate hypotheses: Form a theory, capture narrowly, annotate findings, and compare against a known-good baseline.

How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume

10. Python (for automation)

Python turns repetitive, error-prone work into scripts and pipelines. Configs, checks, reports—done consistently and quickly.

Why It's Important

Automation scales your impact. Fewer fat-fingered outages, faster rollouts, better documentation of intent.

How to Improve Python (for automation) Skills

1. Use the right libraries: Netmiko or Scrapli, NAPALM, Paramiko, Pynetbox, requests, Jinja2, and Pydantic for structure.

2. Orchestrate: Adopt Nornir or Ansible for inventory, parallelism, and idempotent tasks.

3. Talk to APIs: Work with REST, NETCONF/RESTCONF, and gNMI (pygnmi); prefer API-first where available.

4. Engineer like software: Virtualenv/poetry, typing, black/ruff, pre-commit, and CI with tests (pytest, mocks).

5. Protect secrets: Use env vars, vaults, or secret managers; never hardcode credentials.

6. Template safely: Drive configs from data models (YAML/JSON) and validate before push.

7. Practice in labs: Rehearse changes at scale using virtual topologies and failure scenarios.

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

11. VMware NSX

VMware NSX (modern NSX platform, successor to NSX-V) delivers network virtualization and distributed security—routing, switching, and firewalls in software, close to the workload.

Why It's Important

Agility and micro-segmentation in the data center. Policy follows apps, not racks.

How to Improve VMware NSX Skills

1. Design for intent: Clear segments, Tier-0/Tier-1 roles, and routing domains that match application boundaries.

2. Micro-segment: Use the Distributed Firewall with granular groups and context-aware policies; stage and simulate before enforcing.

3. Automate: Drive NSX with Terraform or Ansible and keep policy in version control.

4. Troubleshoot deeply: Use Traceflow, Port Mirroring, and flow analytics to pinpoint drops and asymmetric paths.

5. Scale and protect: Employ Federation for multi-site, load balancers for app resiliency, and regular backups of NSX Manager.

6. Stay current: Track releases, apply upgrades methodically, and validate interop with vSphere and cloud endpoints.

How to Display VMware NSX Skills on Your Resume

12. AWS Networking

AWS networking stitches cloud pieces together: VPCs, gateways, load balancers, firewalls, and global services that move traffic quickly and safely.

Why It's Important

You get scalable, resilient network fabrics with observability baked in, spanning regions and on-prem with consistent policy.

How to Improve AWS Networking Skills

1. Design VPCs deliberately: Plan CIDRs for growth, use subnets per AZ, and isolate workloads with security groups and NACLs.

2. Scale connectivity: Use Transit Gateway for hub-and-spoke, peering for simple cases, and Direct Connect for predictable bandwidth.

3. Distribute traffic: Pick the right load balancer (ALB/NLB/Gateway LB) and consider Global Accelerator for global apps.

4. Cut latency: Place content at the edge with CloudFront and keep traffic regional where possible.

5. Harden perimeters: Deploy AWS Network Firewall, Shield, and WAF; centralize egress and inspect where required.

6. Control costs: Minimize cross-AZ data where practical, use VPC endpoints, and right-size NAT (or centralize).

7. Observe everything: Enable VPC Flow Logs, load balancer access logs, CloudWatch metrics and alarms, and CloudTrail for changes.

8. Embrace IPv6: Use dual-stack VPCs, egress-only gateways for outbound-only services, and prefer IPv6 where supported.

9. Simplify service-to-service: Consider VPC Lattice or PrivateLink for private, consistent service connectivity.

10. Operate safely: Infrastructure as code, change windows, automated rollbacks, and well-tested runbooks.

How to Display AWS Networking Skills on Your Resume