Top 12 NOC Technician Skills to Put on Your Resume

A Network Operations Center (NOC) Technician keeps the lights on and the packets flowing. The job leans on a dense bundle of skills: build, watch, tweak, recover. When something sputters, you spot it early. When performance sags, you shape traffic and tune the pipes. Hiring managers want to see that toolkit on your resume—clearly, concretely, confidently.

NOC Technician Skills

1. Cisco IOS
2. Juniper Junos
3. Network Monitoring (e.g., SolarWinds, Nagios)
4. MPLS
5. BGP
6. OSPF
7. VPN Technologies
8. Wireshark
9. IPv4/IPv6
10. SNMP
11. Firewall Management (e.g., Palo Alto, Fortinet)
12. VoIP Systems

1. Cisco IOS

Cisco IOS and IOS XE power most Cisco routers and many switches. You configure interfaces, routing, security, and services through the CLI to stand up and stabilize networks.

Why It's Important

IOS is the control plane you touch every day. It’s where you enforce policy, troubleshoot outages, and squeeze performance out of the hardware so the network stays fast, predictable, and secure.

How to Improve Cisco IOS Skills

1. Harden access: AAA, SSH only, role-based CLI, secure boot, and encrypted credentials. Kill default creds. Limit management to a dedicated VRF and management ACLs.

2. See everything: enable structured logging, buffered logs, and remote syslog; time-sync with NTP; export NetFlow/IPFIX. Set meaningful hostnames and consistent interface descriptions.

3. Stabilize routing: tune OSPF timers where appropriate, use BFD for fast failure detection, summarize routes at boundaries, and pin down filtering with prefix-lists and route-maps.

4. Shape performance: QoS policies for voice, real-time, and critical services. Police the noise. Queue with intent.

5. Automate the grind: golden configs, templates, and Ansible/Python (Netmiko/NAPALM). Use EEM applets for quick wins and standardize backups with version control.

6. Patch with purpose: follow recommended releases, test in lab (CML/GNS3), and schedule maintenance windows with a rollback plan.

How to Display Cisco IOS Skills on Your Resume

2. Juniper Junos

Junos OS drives Juniper routing, switching, and security platforms. With a candidate/commit model, rollbacks, and clean hierarchy, it’s built for reliable change control.

Why It's Important

Junos makes complex networks feel orderly. Predictable commits, quick reverts, and consistent syntax reduce the “uh-oh” factor during changes and speed up recovery.

How to Improve Juniper Junos Skills

1. Work with candidate configs: use commit confirmed, comments, and rollbacks. Treat every change like code.

2. Automate: PyEZ and Ansible playbooks for bulk updates, audits, and compliance. Event policies and op scripts for reactive fixes.

3. Keep current: follow recommended versions, stage upgrades, and validate with pre/post checks.

4. Troubleshoot with intent: use “show system” families, commit history, traceoptions, and onboard telemetry (JTI) to profile behavior over time.

5. Secure the edge: SSH only, strong auth, encrypted secrets, restricted management access, and tight firewall filters on lo0.

How to Display Juniper Junos Skills on Your Resume

3. Network Monitoring (e.g., SolarWinds, Nagios)

Monitoring platforms watch health, performance, and availability. Poll, trap, stream, alert. When you see drift, you act before users feel it.

Why It's Important

Proactive detection shortens outages. Alert fidelity keeps the pager sane. Visibility exposes bottlenecks so you can clear them out.

How to Improve Network Monitoring (e.g., SolarWinds, Nagios) Skills

1. Baseline first: learn normal. Build thresholds from observed data, not guesses. Separate hard failures from soft degradations.

2. Collect broadly: SNMPv3, syslog, NetFlow/sFlow/IPFIX, APIs, and streaming telemetry where supported. Tie in configuration change alerts.

3. Cut alert noise: dependency mapping, deduplication, rate limits, and clear severities. Your on-call will thank you.

4. Automate response: ticket creation, enrichment with topology, and simple remediation scripts for known issues.

5. Test the testers: synthetic probes for DNS, HTTP, VoIP, and VPN. Verify the path, not just the node.

6. Hygiene: keep device inventories accurate, credentials current, and polling intervals balanced to avoid self-inflicted load.

How to Display Network Monitoring (e.g., SolarWinds, Nagios) Skills on Your Resume

4. MPLS

MPLS steers traffic with labels instead of long lookups. Service providers rely on it; many enterprises ride it for WANs and traffic engineering.

Why It's Important

It delivers predictable paths, fast reroutes, and solid separation of services. When latency matters, engineered tunnels matter more.

How to Improve MPLS Skills

1. Build a sturdy underlay: tune your IGP (OSPF or IS-IS) for fast convergence and sensible summarization before adding labels.

2. Choose your signaling: LDP for simplicity, RSVP-TE for strict paths and bandwidth, or move toward SR-MPLS where supported.

3. Engineer traffic: place constraints, set affinities, and use explicit paths for critical flows. Watch headend CPU and mid-path utilization.

4. QoS end-to-end: consistent markings, per-hop behaviors, and queue tuning across the full LSP path.

5. Guard the core: drop unexpected labels, restrict management, and review control-plane policing. Monitor LSP health continually.

6. Plan capacity: track growth, simulate failures, and keep margin for bursts and maintenance windows.

How to Display MPLS Skills on Your Resume

5. BGP

BGP moves routes between autonomous systems and glues the internet together. It’s also used inside large networks for policy-heavy designs.

Why It's Important

Policy control, scalability, and resilience. With BGP tuned well, you steer traffic intentionally and keep bad routes at bay.

How to Improve BGP Skills

1. Filter like a hawk: prefix-lists, AS-PATH filters, and max-prefix limits. Only announce what you own. Only accept what you trust.

2. Stabilize sessions: BFD for quick failure detection, graceful restart where appropriate, and route dampening for flappers.

3. Secure the edge: MD5 auth, TTL protection equivalents, and strict inbound route policies. Adopt RPKI origin validation and maintain ROAs.

4. Shape traffic: Local Preference, MED, AS-PATH prepends, and communities. Test changes during low-impact windows.

5. Observe constantly: monitor session states, churn, and path changes. Alarm on adjacency drops and unexpected route count swings.

How to Display BGP Skills on Your Resume

6. OSPF

OSPF is a link-state IGP that computes shortest paths with LSAs and areas. Version 2 for IPv4, version 3 for IPv6.

Why It's Important

Fast reconvergence and structured design keep large networks calm under change. When links fail, routes adapt quickly.

How to Improve OSPF Skills

1. Design hierarchically: keep areas tidy, summarize at ABRs, and avoid overloading backbone area 0.

2. Tame the flood: use stub/NSSA where appropriate, throttle LSAs, and right-size SPF timers to limit CPU churn.

3. Mind the segment: set network types correctly, understand DR/BDR on broadcast networks, and tune interface costs intentionally.

4. Authenticate: enable cryptographic authentication and restrict adjacencies to known neighbors only.

5. Speed detection: use BFD to detect link loss rapidly without hammering OSPF timers into instability.

6. Keep it clean: passive interfaces where no neighbors exist, consistent router IDs, and well-documented topology.

How to Display OSPF Skills on Your Resume

7. VPN Technologies

VPNs provide encrypted tunnels over untrusted networks. IPsec (often IKEv2) and TLS-based VPNs cover site-to-site and remote access. WireGuard has entered the mix for lean performance.

Why It's Important

Remote access, branch connectivity, secure operations in the wild. VPNs make private communication possible anywhere with an internet link.

How to Improve VPN Technologies Skills

1. Pick the right flavor: route-based IPsec for dynamic routing; TLS or WireGuard for roaming clients. Prefer modern ciphers and strong key exchange.

2. Control traffic: split tunnel when bandwidth matters, full tunnel when security trumps. Prevent DNS leaks and enforce internal DNS for internal domains.

3. Harden access: MFA, short-lived certificates or strong credentials, device posture checks, and tight ACLs on VPN concentrators.

4. Stabilize sessions: DPD for liveness, appropriate lifetimes, and rekeying that won’t clobber user experience. Consider MOBIKE for roaming clients.

5. Scale smartly: high availability pairs, load balancing, and capacity planning for peak hours. Observe concurrency and throughput trends.

6. Visibility: log connects/disconnects, auth failures, and tunnel traffic classes. Alert on anomalies.

How to Display VPN Technologies Skills on Your Resume

8. Wireshark

Wireshark dissects packets so you can pinpoint failures, misconfigurations, and performance snags. It’s the magnifying glass for protocols.

Why It's Important

When logs hint but don’t prove, captures do. You see who talked, what they said, and how long it took.

How to Improve Wireshark Skills

1. Filter with precision: master capture filters for the wire and display filters for analysis. Craft profiles and coloring rules for rapid scans.

2. Time matters: keep devices NTP-synced, use ring buffers for long captures, and annotate with markers when incidents occur.

3. Decode smartly: apply “decode as” for tricky ports, follow TCP/HTTP streams, and review retransmissions, window sizes, and RTTs.

4. Security-aware: decrypt TLS only when permitted with appropriate keys; validate that sensitive payloads stay encrypted.

5. Scale collection: remote capture where safe (SPAN, ERSPAN, rpcap/SSH-based methods) and avoid capturing on overloaded devices.

How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume

9. IPv4/IPv6

IPv4 addresses are scarce; IPv6 opens the floodgates with 128-bit space and cleaner autoconfiguration. Both will live together for a long time.

Why It's Important

Addressing is the map. Without correct IP design and policy, routing falls apart and services become guesswork.

How to Improve IPv4/IPv6 Skills

1. Dual-stack with discipline: consistent addressing plans, DNS records for both families, and parity in firewall rules.

2. Control discovery: apply RA Guard, DHCPv6 Guard, and sensible prefix lifetimes. Know when you want SLAAC, DHCPv6, or both.

3. Secure both stacks: ACLs for v4 and v6, Neighbor Discovery protection, and logging that doesn’t ignore IPv6 flows.

4. Transition tools: NAT64/DNS64 and 464XLAT where needed. Understand MTU quirks and PMTUD so large packets don’t vanish.

5. IPAM everywhere: centralize allocation, track usage, and retire space cleanly. Avoid snowflake subnets.

6. QoS and routing: align OSPFv2/OSPFv3 or IS-IS configs, keep costs and policies symmetrical, and validate end-to-end.

How to Display IPv4/IPv6 Skills on Your Resume

10. SNMP

SNMP gives your NMS a standardized way to poll metrics and receive traps or informs from network gear.

Why It's Important

It’s the backbone of legacy and modern monitoring alike. Inventory, status, counters—the data stream you need to spot trouble early.

How to Improve SNMP Skills

1. SNMPv3 or bust: authPriv where possible, unique users per role, and engine IDs recorded. Block v1/v2c on anything exposed.

2. Scope access: views to restrict OIDs, ACLs to limit who can poll, and a management VRF for control.

3. Tune cadence: polling intervals that won’t swamp low-power devices. Use traps/informs for immediate events, not everything.

4. MIB sanity: keep vendor MIBs current and map key KPIs to dashboards. Prune noisy or meaningless OIDs.

5. Redundancy: primary/secondary NMS, trap receivers in pairs, and backups of NMS configs.

How to Display SNMP Skills on Your Resume

11. Firewall Management (e.g., Palo Alto, Fortinet)

Firewalls enforce where traffic may go and what it may do. Modern platforms add application awareness, IPS, and threat intel on top.

Why It's Important

They sit at the chokepoints. Done right, they block attacks, reduce blast radius, and still let business move.

How to Improve Firewall Management (e.g., Palo Alto, Fortinet) Skills

1. Clean policy: standard naming, object reuse, clear tagging, and rule recertification. Expire what no one can justify.

2. Segment strategically: zones, VLANs, and micro-segmentation. Keep east-west noise from becoming wildfire.

3. Threat services: enable IPS, anti-malware, DNS security, and URL filtering with sensible exceptions and tight logging.

4. Decrypt with care: SSL/TLS decryption for sanctioned categories, strict privacy exclusions, and performance checks.

5. Centralize control: use managers for consistent policy, staged commits, and role-based approvals. Backup before every change.

6. Be incident-ready: rule-hit logs, packet captures, and canned playbooks. HA pairs tested under failover conditions.

How to Display Firewall Management (e.g., Palo Alto, Fortinet) Skills on Your Resume

12. VoIP Systems

VoIP carries voice and video over IP networks using SIP for signaling and RTP/SRTP for media. Call quality lives or dies on latency, jitter, and loss.

Why It's Important

Phones ring, meetings run, service desks hum—communication depends on it. If your QoS slips, everyone hears it.

How to Improve VoIP Systems Skills

1. Network fitness: voice VLANs, LLDP-MED, PoE budgets, and solid wiring. Keep duplex and MTU mismatches out of the conversation.

2. QoS end-to-end: mark EF for voice, AF classes for signaling/video, and ensure consistent treatment across WAN and LAN.

3. Trim the jitter: prioritize queues, right-size jitter buffers, and watch for microbursts. Track MOS and R-Factor trends.

4. SIP sanity: avoid SIP ALG pitfalls, use SBCs where NAT traversal gets hairy, and keep OPTIONS and keepalives tuned.

5. Secure calls: SRTP for media, TLS for signaling, and strict endpoint authentication. Rate-limit and lock down admin interfaces.

6. Monitor relentlessly: per-call metrics, trunks’ utilization, packet loss heatmaps, and alarms for one-way audio or codec mismatches.

7. Emergency services: verify location databases and test E-911/NG911 call flows after every topology change.

How to Display VoIP Systems Skills on Your Resume