Top 12 Network Analyst Skills to Put on Your Resume

In the competitive field of network analysis, showcasing a robust set of skills on your resume is crucial for standing out to potential employers. This article highlights the top 12 skills that network analysts should emphasize to demonstrate their expertise and adaptability in the ever-evolving landscape of network technology.

Network Analyst Skills

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

1. Cisco IOS

Cisco IOS (Internetwork Operating System) is the operating system that powers Cisco routers and many switches, providing a broad set of protocols and features for routing, switching, security, and management. Modern deployments often run IOS XE, which adds programmability and model-driven telemetry.

Why It's Important

Cisco IOS is central to configuring, routing, securing, and operating Cisco-based networks. A network analyst leans on it for stable connectivity, controlled change, and fast troubleshooting across varied topologies.

How to Improve Cisco IOS Skills

1. Update on a safe cadence: Track recommended releases and apply security fixes. Standardize code trains across similar devices to reduce surprises.

2. Harden and minimize: Disable unused services, enforce SSHv2, AAA with TACACS+/RADIUS, role-based CLI, secure SNMP, and apply Control Plane Policing. Use secure boot and image verification when available.

3. Monitor what matters: Export NetFlow/IPFIX, enable model-driven telemetry where supported, and keep concise SNMPv3 polling. Send syslog to a central collector for correlation.

4. Optimize configurations: Use templates, consistent interface naming, and structured comments. Keep the management plane isolated (out-of-band or mgmt VRF).

5. Troubleshoot with intent: Leverage Embedded Packet Capture, conditional debugs, and Wireshark. Baseline before changes; compare after.

6. Automate safely: Use Ansible, NAPALM, or pyATS for repeatable tasks and pre/post checks. Employ EEM or Kron for local safety nets.

Small, careful changes plus strong observability go a long way in keeping IOS networks calm and quick.

How to Display Cisco IOS Skills on Your Resume

2. Juniper Junos

Juniper Junos is the network operating system for Juniper routers, switches, and security devices. Its commit/rollback model, hierarchical configuration, and consistent CLI make change control and auditing cleaner.

Why It's Important

Junos provides a stable, consistent platform for configuration, automation, and troubleshooting. The transaction-based commit model reduces risk and speeds recovery when changes misbehave.

How to Improve Juniper Junos Skills

1. Stay current: Track recommended releases and feature maturity notes; standardize versions across device families where feasible.

2. Automate with native tools: Use PyEZ, Ansible, and JET/NETCONF for idempotent changes and structured telemetry.

3. Master configuration workflows: Use groups and templates, commit confirmed, rescue configs, and configuration archival. Review commit diffs religiously.

4. Harden the platform: Apply firewall filters, protect the Routing Engine, segment management, and use user classes with least privilege.

5. Grow expertise: Pursue JNCIA/JNCIS/JNCIP tracks and lab regularly on virtual platforms.

6. Engage the community: Compare approaches, read release notes deeply, and adopt field-proven best practices.

Measure twice, commit once—Junos rewards disciplined operators.

How to Display Juniper Junos Skills on Your Resume

3. BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)

BGP is the exterior routing protocol that stitches autonomous systems together. It selects paths based on policy and attributes rather than simple metrics, giving operators fine control over traffic flows at Internet scale.

Why It's Important

Without BGP, global connectivity collapses. It allows organizations to shape inbound and outbound routes, build redundancy, and exchange reachability safely with peers and providers.

How to Improve BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) Skills

1. Secure the control plane: Enforce RPKI origin validation and publish accurate ROAs. BGPsec exists but is optional and sparse in deployment.

2. Filter ruthlessly: Accept only expected prefixes and AS paths. Set max-prefix limits, drop bogons, and use strict import/export route-maps. Keep IRR data accurate.

3. Engineer traffic with intent: Use Local Preference, MED, AS path prepending, and communities to steer flows. Decide on hot-potato vs cold-potato strategies deliberately.

4. Design for failure: Dual-home, diversify providers and facilities, enable Graceful Restart where appropriate, and use BFD for fast fault detection.

5. Observe continuously: Track session health, path changes, and leaks. Monitor route collectors and set alerting for anomalies.

6. Tune stability: Apply route dampening sparingly and carefully. Prefer hygiene and filtering over heavy-handed suppression.

7. Keep peering data current: Maintain up-to-date peering details with exchanges and partners to speed troubleshooting and turn-ups.

Strong policy, clean data, constant visibility—BGP behaves when you do.

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

4. OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)

OSPF is a link-state IGP used within an autonomous system. OSPFv2 handles IPv4; OSPFv3 covers IPv6. It builds a topology map and computes shortest paths with Dijkstra’s algorithm.

Why It's Important

For large, fast-changing internal networks, OSPF brings scalable convergence, structured hierarchy, and fault isolation that distance-vector protocols struggle to match.

How to Improve OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) Skills

1. Design hierarchically: Keep a clean Area 0 backbone, use ABRs wisely, and minimize unnecessary adjacencies.

2. Use the right area types: Stub, totally stubby, and NSSA reduce LSA noise and shrink routing tables where appropriate.

3. Speed detection: Tune hello/dead timers prudently and use BFD for sub-second failure detection without destabilizing the domain.

4. Summarize routes: Summarize at area boundaries to cut SPF churn and memory use.

5. Influence paths: Adjust interface costs to guide traffic away from constrained links.

6. Authenticate: Use HMAC-SHA for OSPFv2 and IPsec for OSPFv3. Block unauthorized adjacencies at the edge.

7. Stabilize SPF: Use LSA and SPF throttling, passive interfaces, and thoughtful DR/BDR election design on multi-access segments.

Structure beats brute force. Quiet areas, quick convergence, fewer surprises.

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

5. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)

MPLS forwards packets based on short labels, not long addresses, slashing lookup overhead and enabling VPNs, traffic engineering, and fast reroute. Many networks now blend LDP/RSVP-TE with Segment Routing (SR-MPLS) as they evolve.

Why It's Important

MPLS improves determinism and efficiency across complex backbones. It cleanly separates transport from services, keeps latency low, and supports strict SLAs.

How to Improve MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) Skills

1. Design the core and edges cleanly: Define PE/P/CE roles clearly, isolate the control plane, and standardize loopbacks and label allocation strategies.

2. Adopt traffic engineering where it helps: Use RSVP-TE or SR-TE for explicit paths, bandwidth reservations, and disjointness when congestion or SLAs demand it.

3. Align QoS end to end: Map DSCP to MPLS EXP/TC consistently, deploy LLQ/CBWFQ, and avoid starving best-effort with aggressive priority queues.

4. Plan capacity: Watch link utilization, LFIB scale, and adjacency resources. Model growth before it bites.

5. Segment with L3VPNs (and L2VPNs when needed): Design RDs/RTs systematically; keep import/export policies readable and predictable.

6. Protect with fast reroute: Enable LFA/TI-LFA for sub-50 ms recovery, and verify coverage with topology checks.

7. Keep code fresh: Maintain consistent, supported releases across vendors and secure the MPLS control plane. Adjust TTL propagation deliberately.

Labels make the backbone hum when policy, QoS, and TE march in step.

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

6. Wireshark

Wireshark is a protocol analyzer that captures and dissects packets in real time. It reveals what’s really happening on the wire—handshakes, retransmits, slow paths, and oddities.

Why It's Important

When logs and counters hint but don’t prove, packet captures settle arguments. A network analyst using Wireshark can pinpoint root causes with byte-level clarity.

How to Improve Wireshark Skills

1. Nail the basics: Use capture filters vs display filters correctly, and rotate files with ring buffers to avoid disk blowups.

2. Level up analysis: Build reusable profiles, color rules, and custom columns. Decode TLS when you have lawful keys for deep inspection.

3. Extend with dissectors: Leverage built-in and custom dissectors to decode proprietary or niche protocols.

4. Automate the grind: Use TShark and command-line exports to script repetitive parsing and produce quick reports.

5. Practice on real captures: Work through diverse pcaps—VoIP, TCP slow start, DNS oddities, IPv6 neighbor issues.

6. Stay current: Update Wireshark and keep pace with evolving protocols and TLS ciphers.

7. Get validated: Consider WCNA certification to demonstrate practical packet analysis chops.

Packets don’t lie. Learn their language and problems get loud and obvious.

How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume

7. SolarWinds

SolarWinds provides network and systems monitoring, configuration management, and flow analysis. It centralizes visibility, speeds diagnosis, and supports compliance work.

Why It's Important

With unified metrics, logs, topology, and configs, a network analyst can see patterns quickly and act before users notice pain.

How to Improve SolarWinds Skills

1. Tune the platform: Right-size pollers, clean up device roles, and schedule database maintenance. Prune noisy objects.

2. Make dashboards useful: Build persona-based views for NOC, engineering, and leadership. Surface health, saturation, and recent change context.

3. Analyze flows: Ingest NetFlow/IPFIX/sFlow to identify top talkers, apps, and east-west bursts.

4. Alert with restraint: Use dependencies, thresholds, and time-of-day logic to stop alert storms and highlight what’s truly actionable.

5. Back up configs automatically: Use configuration management to archive, diff, and enforce compliance policies.

6. Secure and patch: Keep components updated, segment the management plane, enforce MFA, and use least-privilege service accounts.

7. Engage and learn: Participate in training and community forums to share queries, reports, and scripts.

Good monitoring is quiet most days, loud only when it must be.

How to Display SolarWinds Skills on Your Resume

8. Python (for automation)

Python is the de facto language for network automation. Readable, batteries-included, and surrounded by libraries made for devices and APIs.

Why It's Important

Repetitive, error-prone CLI work becomes fast, tested, and predictable. Python scripts turn tribal knowledge into sharable, versioned workflows.

How to Improve Python (for automation) Skills

1. Solidify fundamentals: Data structures, functions, modules, virtual environments, and packaging.

2. Use network libraries: Netmiko or Scrapli for CLI, NAPALM for abstraction, Nornir for orchestration, Paramiko for SSH underpinnings.

3. Automate at scale: Combine Ansible or Terraform (network providers) with Python glue. Add pyATS for test-driven network changes.

4. Work in labs: Build scenarios in EVE-NG/GNS3/containers or vendor sandboxes. Automate backups, golden configs, and drift checks.

5. Speak to APIs: Master JSON/YAML, REST/RESTCONF/NETCONF/gNMI. Parse, validate, and handle errors cleanly.

6. Version and test: Git with branches, pre-commit hooks, linting, and pytest. Code reviews save outages.

7. Ship with CI/CD: Use pipelines to run checks, generate plans, and apply changes in controlled waves.

Automate the toil, keep humans for judgment.

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

9. IPv6

IPv6 replaces IPv4’s scarcity with abundance—about 3.4×10^38 addresses—while modernizing autoconfiguration, extensibility, and security. It’s specified in RFC 8200 and is standard fare for today’s networks and devices.

Why It's Important

Public IPv4 addresses are tight and costly. IPv6 restores end-to-end reachability, supports IoT growth, and avoids brittle NAT complexity.

How to Improve IPv6 Skills

1. Plan addressing cleanly: Allocate by site/function, assign /64s to subnets, and document well. Prefer dual-stack while you phase in services.

2. Harden first hops: Use RA Guard, DHCPv6 Guard, and appropriate ACLs. Disable IPv6 where unneeded to shrink attack surface.

3. Match QoS parity: Ensure IPv6 traffic gets the same classification, marking, and queuing as IPv4.

4. Pick sane transitions: Dual-stack first. Use NAT64/464XLAT where IPv4-only apps must be reached. Avoid long-lived tunnels when possible.

5. Watch unique behaviors: Understand SLAAC, DHCPv6, DAD, privacy extensions, and neighbor cache limits. Monitor with flow and telemetry.

6. Train the team: Troubleshooting differs—ND instead of ARP, ICMPv6 is essential, and filtering ICMPv6 blindly breaks things.

Address abundance feels luxurious—if you plan and secure it upfront.

How to Display IPv6 Skills on Your Resume

10. SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)

SNMP collects state and counters from networked devices and can make controlled changes. It’s foundational for inventory, monitoring, and alerting, though many teams now pair it with streaming telemetry.

Why It's Important

SNMP provides a common language for tools to measure availability, performance, and configuration across heterogeneous gear.

How to Improve SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) Skills

1. Prefer SNMPv3: Use authentication and encryption. Disable v1/v2c wherever possible.

2. Restrict access: Limit sources with ACLs, isolate in a management VRF/VLAN, and avoid exposing SNMP on the data plane.

3. Patch the fleet: Keep device firmware current and close known vulnerabilities.

4. Segment polling: Separate pollers by region/role, stagger intervals, and avoid overwhelming low-power devices.

5. Audit and alert: Track authentication failures, unusual OID spikes, and traps/informs volume. Investigate quickly.

6. Harden credentials: If v2c must exist briefly, rotate complex communities and limit their scope.

7. Modernize where needed: Introduce model-driven telemetry (gNMI/NETCONF/RESTCONF) for high-scale metrics; retain SNMP for inventory and legacy gear.

Keep it tight, encrypted, and quiet—then it scales without leaks.

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

11. VPN (Virtual Private Network)

A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel over untrusted networks, enabling secure remote access and site-to-site connectivity. Common choices include IPsec and modern protocols like WireGuard.

Why It's Important

Remote work, distributed apps, and third-party access all hinge on strong, private connectivity that resists interception and tampering.

How to Improve VPN (Virtual Private Network) Skills

1. Choose sound cryptography: Favor AES-GCM suites for IPsec/IKEv2 and ChaCha20-Poly1305 for WireGuard. Avoid outdated algorithms.

2. Place endpoints wisely: Use gateways close to users and balance load. Anycast or smart DNS can help distribute sessions.

3. Split with care: Apply split tunneling by policy or application to spare bandwidth while keeping sensitive traffic in the tunnel.

4. Stamp out fragmentation: Set MSS clamping and correct MTUs to prevent hidden performance hits.

5. Keep it updated: Patch concentrators and clients promptly. Rotate certificates and deprecate weak cipher suites.

6. Watch and verify: Monitor throughput, latency, failure rates, and geo anomalies. Feed logs to centralized analytics.

7. Strengthen identity: Enforce MFA, device certificates, and posture checks. Limit lateral movement with per-app access where possible.

8. Educate users: Short, clear guidance on when and how to connect avoids self-inflicted wounds.

Fast, safe tunnels with tight identity controls keep remote access feeling local.

How to Display VPN (Virtual Private Network) Skills on Your Resume

12. QoS (Quality of Service)

QoS prioritizes important traffic and manages congestion so real-time apps stay crisp and critical services remain available under load.

Why It's Important

Bandwidth isn’t infinite and bursts happen. QoS protects voice, video, control, and business-critical traffic from the chaos.

How to Improve QoS (Quality of Service) Skills

1. Classify with evidence: Baseline flows, identify applications, and define classes that map to business value.

2. Set trust boundaries: Don’t trust markings from endpoints by default. Remark at the edge and enforce DSCP policy consistently.

3. Shape and police: Apply shaping on egress where queues form, use policing with care, and give real-time queues strict priority with limits.

4. Use the right mechanisms: DiffServ end to end. Map CoS to DSCP across L2/L3 domains. IntServ is niche—avoid unless there’s a clear need.

5. Tune for voice and video: EF for voice bearer, AF/CS classes for signaling and video. Size queues to link speeds, not wishes.

6. Manage congestion intelligently: Enable WRED where it helps TCP behave; consider ECN to reduce drops under pressure.

7. Measure continuously: Track jitter, loss, and queue depth. Close the loop and refine policies as traffic evolves.

8. Document the map: Keep an end-to-end QoS matrix by platform and vendor so markings don’t get mangled mid-path.

QoS isn’t set-and-forget. It’s a living contract between apps, links, and users.

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