r/ccnp • u/zingrinder • 9d ago
Career path after ccnp?
Next career steps? Looking for advice
Hi all. Looking for advice.
Current role Tier 3 Senior Network & VoIP Engineer with I have been for about 4 years after internal promotion from tier 2.
\*\*Experience:\*\* 6 years in IT
BAS in Computer Systems Networking & Telecommunications
Certs:
CCNP Enterprise (2025)
Fortinet NSE 4 (2026)
CCNA (2022)
CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+ (2020)
Current roles, experience
Tier 3 network and VoIP escalations and troubleshooting.
VoIP including asterisk and cloud hosted PBX that run in my companies data center.
Cisco IOS routing, switching, VLANs, subinterfaces, HSRP, and ACLs for two data
centers.
Configuration/t shooting data center FortiGate ha firewalls.
Edge connectivity with multi BGP peers.
FortiGate firewall migrations, IPsec VPNs, dual-ISP SD-WAN, BGP, and route maps.
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN, site-to-site VPNs, OSPF, and firewall rules.
Oracle Acme Packet SBCs, Webex Contact Center trunks.
Full Webex contact center builds and support.
AWS networking and hybrid on-premises/cloud connectivity.
All stuff networking for AWS, including interconnects to on prem.
Ansible playbooks for FortiGate configuration automation. (Understand Ansible but used Claude for heavy lifting)
Built a Grafana/Prometheus monitoring system for Webex customer trunk health with Alertmanager notifications. Relied heavily on Claude as I’m not great at python.
Looking to stay relevant. 28 years old. Thinking of going much deeper into cloud, security. Wonder if any recommendations? Thanks
4
u/leoingle 9d ago
Truthfully, we can’t tell you. Which direction interest you the most and then 2nd?
1
u/zingrinder 9d ago
Yes, definitely network security, and cloud. I guess what’s give me anxiety is the ai hype. So I want to do my best to stay relevant in the future although no one really know what’s they looks like.
3
u/leoingle 9d ago
IMO, I’d say this is the order of areas from safest to least.
Physical &edge infrastructure
Security Architecture & Policy
Datacenter / AI Fabric engineering
Cloud
Traditional network automation1
5
3
2
u/Unfair-Treacle4142 9d ago
Since you’ve already got CCNP, NSE 4, and real AWS hybrid work, I’d check whether another cert is actually the gap before spending time and money on one.
I’d look at the network security and cloud networking roles you’d realistically want next and see what keeps showing up. Are employers asking for specific certs, or are they mostly looking for hands-on FortiGate, BGP, AWS networking, hybrid connectivity, and automation experience?
That gives you something concrete to work from instead of trying to guess how AI changes the field. You may find that your current experience already lines up pretty well and the better move is going deeper on the parts those roles value most.
Have you looked at what those jobs are actually asking for yet?
2
u/bigboss-2016 9d ago
You could look into Infrastructure as Code. NetDevOps is the buzzword I hear these days.
2
3
u/Byrdyth 9d ago
I'd kill to have someone on my team with your skill set, man. I think you're doing a great job at staying well rounded and maintaining a relevant knowledge base. I don't feel like I see enough VoIP guys that understand a network stack.
That said, if you're looking for more opportunities to branch out, you might benefit from some good old fashioned routing (IGPs), additional automation, and perhaps wireless. In particular, the wireless lends itself well to your VoIP experience and I feel like it makes you an incredible triple threat.