Networking Certifications Doesn't Have To Be Hard. Read These 5 Tips

IT pros skilled in the many areas of networking are in high demand in today's job market. Those serious about their IT careers should consider one or more of these best-of-breed networking certifications to set themselves apart from their competitors. 

When it comes to the care and feeding of modern networks, there's quite a lengthy list of tools and technologies that qualified IT professionals must master – especially those who aspire to work as network administrators. In addition to the servers and clients that make up the endpoints in such environments, there's a lot of network networking certifications  infrastructure to worry about. This includes switches and routers (both physical and virtual), plus a raft of appliances and services, such as unified threat management (UTM), next-generation firewalls (NGFs), software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions, virtualization (NFV) components and WAN optimization, as well as spam, email, and content filtering. 

Wrapping your head around all these certification options and specialties can be challenging, but knowing where to start can help. We looked at five networking certifications (in their order of appearance in the job boards table that follows) that we consider leaders in the field of networking for 2019 and beyond. 

To pick our leaders, we looked at the state of networking certification, examined various market and salary surveys, and performed an informal job board survey that revealed the number of job posts across the U.S. in which our featured certifications were mentioned on a given day. 

CCIE: Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert

An evergreen and high-value networking certification is the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE), which comes in several tracks. The annual production of CCIEs remains small enough that Cisco can still claim itself able to hire all of them itself, with demand and appreciation for this difficult and rewarding certification always stratospheric. Over the past few years, the Storage Networking credential gave way to Collaboration, and a Data Center credential made its debut, as well as other new certification tracks. 

Although the road to obtaining a CCIE is long and hard, it is well worth the effort, time, and money. This credential opens doors to plenty of job opportunities and high salaries for networking professionals.

In recent years, IT decision-makers have told us conclusively there are two technical areas that demand the most investment—cloud computing and cybersecurity.

So it shouldn’t be a major surprise that the top four IT certifications by salary are in either cloud or security. IT professionals with these skills are in high demand and command the largest paychecks in the industry.

Our list of the top-paying certifications in the United States is based on survey responses from the Global Knowledge 2020 IT Skills and Salary Survey (report to be released in the spring). This year saw more turnover than most, as seven new certifications cracked the top 15.

Also new this year, we provide a snapshot of the average certification-holder for each credential. Find out how many current certifications they own, which other certification they’re likely to have, their age and most likely job role. We offer this new information to provide a more representative picture of each certification. The salaries in this article aren’t simply a result of achieving a specified certification—they are a culmination of many factors, including relevant skills, job role, tenure and hard work.

Certifications that focus on how to design, configure and manage virtualized networks and networks within data centers will help you land jobs in larger enterprises that maintain private data centers. These types of certifications are also useful if you work (or seek to work) for a cloud service provider (CSP). If your goal is to become a specialist in network troubleshooting of complex problems, a certification in a specific monitoring or troubleshooting tools can be incredibly valuable toward reaching your goals. Finally, if you want to spend more of your time working with specific network components such as security appliances, wireless technologies or network automation, a certification in one of these specific fields can help you to steer your career toward those targets.