Top 12 Network Administrator Skills to Put on Your Resume

Networks shift under your feet. Apps sprawl, users roam, threats poke and prod. A sharp network administrator keeps the lights on and the doors locked, blending protocol fluency with hard-nosed troubleshooting. Put these skills on your resume with clear outcomes and measurable impact, and you’ll stand out fast.

Network Administrator 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. VMware NSX
8. Microsoft Active Directory
9. DNS (Domain Name System)
10. DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)
11. Wireshark
12. PowerShell

1. Cisco IOS

Cisco IOS (and IOS XE) powers Cisco routers and switches, steering core packet handling, interfaces, and services for data, voice, and video. It’s the daily driver and the recovery rope.

Why It's Important

It’s the operating fabric for Cisco gear. Configure, secure, and troubleshoot with confidence and your network hums. Get it wrong and things wobble.

How to Improve Cisco IOS Skills

1. Stay current: Track stable releases, test in a lab, and plan upgrades with maintenance windows.

2. Harden access: Enforce AAA, role-based CLI views, SSH-only management, GTSM where relevant, and strong logging.

3. Log and watch: Syslog with meaningful severity, buffered logs, SNMP with secure communities or v3, and NTP that never drifts.

4. Control the blast radius: Tight ACLs, CoPP/CPPr, disable unused services and interfaces, and limit management from known subnets.

5. Prioritize traffic: QoS for real-time and critical apps; classify, mark, queue, and police with intent.

6. Encrypt where it counts: IPsec, MACsec, or TLS for data-in-transit on sensitive paths.

7. Back up relentlessly: Versioned configs, golden images, and automated rollbacks.

8. Test changes: Use templates, dry runs, and peer reviews to avoid midnight surprises.

How to Display Cisco IOS Skills on Your Resume

2. Juniper Junos

Junos OS runs across Juniper routers, switches, and security platforms with a consistent CLI, commit-based configuration, and a clean separation of control and forwarding.

Why It's Important

One syntax, many boxes. Reliability improves, change control gets cleaner, and troubleshooting becomes fast and repeatable.

How to Improve Juniper Junos Skills

1. Master the commit model: Candidate configs, commit confirmed, rollbacks, and rescue configs—use them all.

2. Structure configs: Hierarchical policies, groups, apply-groups, and logical systems for reusable, tidy deployments.

3. Automate: Embrace event scripts, PyEZ, Jinja2 templating, and pipelines to standardize change.

4. Harden: Limit management access, use firewall filters, enable authentication and logging, and prune unused daemons.

5. Monitor deeply: Real-time Op scripts, telemetry/streaming, and clear show commands in operational playbooks.

6. Stay trained: Follow Juniper certification tracks and keep a personal lab with vLabs or device emulators.

How to Display Juniper Junos Skills on Your Resume

3. BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)

BGP binds the internet together and governs large-scale routing between autonomous systems. Inside enterprises and data centers, it coordinates multipath reachability and policy-heavy routes.

Why It's Important

Path control equals uptime and cost control. With BGP you decide what enters, what leaves, and how it all fails over.

How to Improve BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) Skills

1. Filter ruthlessly: Prefix-lists, AS-path filters, communities, max-prefix, and explicit import/export policies. No open doors.

2. Stabilize: Damp flappers judiciously, tune keepalive/hold timers, and use graceful restart and long-lived graceful restart where appropriate.

3. Secure sessions: Session authentication, TTL security/hop-limit (GTSM), strict neighbor definitions, and route-only what you own.

4. Validate origins: Deploy RPKI ROAs and route validation; tag and drop invalids. Consider ASPA as it matures for path validation.

5. Use communities with intent: Standardize tags for traffic engineering, blackholing, and geographic policy.

6. Observe constantly: Monitor prefixes, path changes, and flaps; alert on leaks, hijacks, and session churn.

7. Engineer traffic: MED, local-pref, selective prepending, and egress load-sharing with care and documentation.

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

4. OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)

OSPF is a link-state IGP that maps your domain and computes shortest paths. OSPFv2 for IPv4, OSPFv3 for IPv6—neighbors chat, LSAs spread, SPF runs.

Why It's Important

It gives you fast convergence, sane hierarchy, and predictable routing within an autonomous system. When the core wiggles, users shouldn’t notice.

How to Improve OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) Skills

1. Design with areas: Keep the backbone clean, use stubs/totally stubbies/NSSAs to shrink LSDBs, and summarize at ABRs.

2. Tune churn: SPF and LSA throttling, sensible hello/dead timers per link type, and BFD for rapid failure detection.

3. Pick interface types: Point-to-point on links that are point-to-point; avoid needless DR elections. Set DR priorities where needed.

4. Cost with purpose: Normalize reference bandwidth, set costs to guide load-sharing and preferred paths.

5. Secure adjacencies: Authentication (for v2 or v3), passive interfaces, and tight neighbor expectations.

6. Monitor neighbors: Alert on adjacency drops, LSDB size swings, and frequent SPF runs.

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

5. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)

MPLS forwards packets by labels, not long looks into routing tables. It unlocks VPNs, traffic engineering, and fast reroute across WANs and cores.

Why It's Important

It trims latency, enforces class-of-service, and carves private overlays across shared backbones.

How to Improve MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) Skills

1. Engineer the paths: Use TE or move toward Segment Routing (SR-MPLS) for simpler, scalable intent-based paths.

2. Assure fast recovery: Enable FRR/LFA and BFD to cut failover to sub-second territory.

3. Synchronize control and data: LDP-IGP sync, graceful restart, and ordered FECs to avoid black holes during reconvergence.

4. Prioritize with QoS: Map classes end-to-end, honor markings, and police where abuse creeps in.

5. Secure the core: Isolate control planes, authenticate sessions, and consider encryption for sensitive segments or over untrusted media.

6. Modernize prudently: Plan migrations from LDP/RSVP-TE to SR where it fits your hardware and ops model.

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

6. IPv6

IPv6 brings a colossal address space, cleaner neighbor discovery, and up-to-date extension headers. No more rationing addresses or clumsy NAT bandaids where they don’t belong.

Why It's Important

Everything is online and multiplying. IPv6 ensures growth, better routing aggregation, and modern security capabilities.

How to Improve IPv6 Skills

1. Plan the space: Hierarchical allocation, nibble-boundary subnets, and documented prefixes. Avoid renumbering chaos later.

2. Dual-stack with intent: Stage rollouts, test parity with IPv4, and watch for asymmetric paths. Retire transition mechanisms as you mature.

3. Defend the LAN: RA Guard, DHCPv6 Guard, IPv6 ACLs by default, and first-hop security features to stop rogue adverts.

4. Modern DNS and apps: AAAA records, Happy Eyeballs behavior, and application readiness checks before flipping switches.

5. Monitor: IPv6-aware tooling, IPAM for v6, and visibility into neighbor tables and multicast behavior.

6. Secure transport: Use IPsec where appropriate, and keep extension headers in check with filtering policies.

How to Display IPv6 Skills on Your Resume

7. VMware NSX

VMware NSX brings network virtualization and security into software: logical switching, routing, firewalls, load balancing, IDS/IPS, and micro-segmentation stitched into your hypervisor fabric.

Why It's Important

You gain speed and consistency. Networks follow workloads; security wraps around them. Less box-by-box toil.

How to Improve VMware NSX Skills

1. Run supported releases: Keep pace with stable versions, read release notes, and lab upgrades before production.

2. Design the underlay well: MTU, ECMP-ready spines, and deterministic transport zones. The overlay only soars on a sturdy underlay.

3. Micro-segment deliberately: Start with app maps, create least-privilege policies in the distributed firewall, and iterate with real flows.

4. Leverage advanced security: IDS/IPS, gateway firewalling, and distributed services for east-west and north-south control.

5. Automate: Integrate with desired-state tools and pipelines to stamp consistent constructs across tenants and environments.

6. Observe: Use flow analytics and telemetry to validate policies and spot drift.

7. Plan for scale: Edge node sizing, ECMP, federation where multi-site is a must.

How to Display VMware NSX Skills on Your Resume

8. Microsoft Active Directory

Active Directory centralizes identity, policy, and access across Windows environments. It’s the keys, the doors, and the logbook.

Why It's Important

User lifecycle, group policy, secure auth, delegated admin—without it, Windows fleets drift and security gaps widen.

How to Improve Microsoft Active Directory Skills

1. Patch and baseline: Keep domain controllers current, apply security baselines, and remove deprecated protocols.

2. Tiered admin: Privileged Access Workstations, role separation, JIT/JEA models, and least privilege across the board.

3. Secure authentication: Enforce strong Kerberos, LDAP signing and channel binding, phase out NTLM where feasible, and enable smart card or phishing-resistant MFA for admins.

4. Protect DCs: Isolate with firewalls, monitor for DCSync and golden ticket behavior, and keep minimal software footprints.

5. Backup with proof: Regular system state backups, authoritative/non-authoritative recovery runbooks, and recovery drills.

6. Harden Group Policy: Clean up GPO sprawl, sign GPOs, and audit link order and inheritance.

7. Hybrid clarity: If syncing to cloud directories, scope and secure the connector, and document source-of-truth rules.

How to Display Microsoft Active Directory Skills on Your Resume

9. DNS (Domain Name System)

DNS translates human-friendly names to IP addresses. Type example.com, reach the right host. Simple on the surface, intricate underneath.

Why It's Important

If DNS stalls, everything feels broken. Fast, correct answers keep apps snappy and users happy.

How to Improve DNS (Domain Name System) Skills

1. Redundancy first: Multiple authoritative servers, split-horizon where needed, and anycast for reach and resilience.

2. Enable DNSSEC: Sign zones and validate responses to stop spoofing and cache poisoning.

3. Tune TTLs: Short for agility, long for stability. Adjust per record type and change cadence.

4. Cache smartly: Recursive resolvers with sensible limits and negative caching to cut query load.

5. Harden: Limit zone transfers, restrict recursion, lock down dynamic updates, and rate-limit abuse.

6. Observe: Track latency, SERVFAIL rates, NXDOMAIN spikes, and malformed queries; alert on anomalies.

7. Geo and failover: Use policy-based answers and health checks to steer traffic and shed failures.

How to Display DNS (Domain Name System) Skills on Your Resume

10. DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)

DHCP hands out IP settings at scale—addresses, gateways, DNS, options—without manual drudgery.

Why It's Important

Devices appear, move, and vanish. Good DHCP prevents conflicts, reduces hands-on work, and keeps clients online.

How to Improve DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) Skills

1. Scope planning: Right-size pools, reserve static devices, and separate by VLAN or site to avoid exhaustion.

2. High availability: Use DHCP failover or split scopes, and test lease handover during outages.

3. Secure the edge: DHCP snooping, IP source guard, and option 82 with authentication to block rogue servers.

4. Lease strategy: Short leases for transient clients, longer for stable segments; adjust for wireless churn.

5. IPAM synergy: Integrate with IP address management for visibility, audits, and conflict detection.

6. Audit and alert: Watch for declines, NAKs, starved pools, and duplicate MAC activity.

7. IPv6 ready: DHCPv6 and SLAAC combinations that fit your security and logging needs.

How to Display DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) Skills on Your Resume

11. Wireshark

Wireshark captures packets and lays them bare. Protocol dissectors, filters, and flows—truth on the wire.

Why It's Important

When logs lie or stay silent, packets tell you exactly what happened. Performance, security, oddities—you see it all.

How to Improve Wireshark Skills

1. Filter fluency: Capture and display filters that slice noise away. Save profiles for common tasks.

2. Work from taps/SPAN: Clean captures with correct MTU and timestamps beat client-side guesswork.

3. Decode smartly: Enable protocol preferences, add keys for lawful decryption where permitted, and follow streams.

4. Graph the story: IO graphs, TCP stream graphs, and expert info to pinpoint latency, loss, and retransmits.

5. Automate: Tshark for headless captures, ring buffers, and scripted filters for repeatable investigations.

6. Build a library: Keep sample pcaps of known issues and golden-path traffic to compare behavior.

How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume

12. PowerShell

PowerShell is a shell and scripting language for automation across Windows and beyond. With PowerShell 7, it stretches cross-platform and plugs into almost everything.

Why It's Important

Bulk changes get safer. Repetitive work disappears. Telemetry and checks speed up. Your time goes where it matters.

How to Improve PowerShell Skills

1. Learn by doing: Write scripts for real admin chores—inventory, backups, interface checks, and config drift.

2. Structure scripts: Advanced functions, parameters, pipeline input, verbose/debug output, and robust error handling.

3. Remote the right way: PowerShell Remoting over WinRM or SSH, constrained endpoints, and Just Enough Administration.

4. Manage secrets: Use secure credential storage and never hard-code passwords.

5. Test and lint: Pester tests for modules and scripts, code formatting, and CI hooks for safer changes.

6. Module mindset: Break reusable logic into modules; version them and publish internally.

7. Stay current: Track PowerShell 7 updates, new networking cmdlets, and improvements in remoting and logging.

How to Display PowerShell Skills on Your Resume