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Average CCDA Salary 2018

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January 2, 2018 by
Infosec

Have you been thinking about making a career switch to become a network design professional? The best way to catapult your career into the dizzying heights of network design, and set yourself apart from the crowd, is to earn your Cisco Certified Design Associate (CCDA) certification. The need for CCDA professionals has increased over the years simply because the network is evolving rapidly and growing in complexity. Every day, organizations stand face to face with new business requirements and there is a higher demand for new functionality and capability.

Most network designers have the necessary knowledge and skills to design common networking applications as well as services like LAN and WAN, routing, switching, and security. But the fact of the matter is, there are very few professionals out there with knowledge and skills geared towards gathering and interpreting all the inputs required for design and implementation of advanced applications and services like application optimization, wireless LANs (WLANs), virtualization, IPv6, and the cloud. This is where the Cisco Certified Design Associate certification plays an important role as it imparts essential knowledge related to network design principles and provides skills that will help professionals to maintain the highest possible standards in network design.

Why CCDA is so popular

The Cisco Certified Design Associate (CCDA) certification has been created specifically for those candidates who want to pursue a career in network design. The CCDA curriculum is the most comprehensive curriculums in the market today and it helps build the foundation for job roles in design. The curriculum is geared towards providing professionals with knowledge related to designing routed and switched network infrastructures and services. It provides aspiring network designers with a platform for creating efficient network environments using their knowledge of network design fundamentals. The Cisco certified design associate can demonstrate their skills related to designing basic campus, security, data center, voice, and wireless networks.

Average Pay after CCDA Certification

Cisco Certified Design Associate (CCDA) is one of the top paying certifications in network design today those who have the cert earn an average annual salary of $89,000. The national salary trend for the CCDA has remained quite stable since July 2012 and peaked in April 2014 as seen in the following graph:

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Job titles for CCDA certified professionals

The entry level job titles in the industry for CCDA certified professionals are WAN administrator, Network Design Technician, Support Technician and Network engineer. The mid and senior level designations for CCDA certified professionals include Cisco Systems Engineer, Network Design Engineer, Technical Consultant, and Network Solutions Architect among others.

What sets CCDA certification apart from other network design certifications?

The Cisco Certified Design Associate (CCDA) certification will validate that you have the necessary knowledge required for designing a Cisco converged network. This certification program provides a candidate with the skills, knowledge, capabilities to accomplish the following tasks:

  • Analyzing requirements: This includes the analysis of business goals and constraints, keeping in mind the desired user experience, ability to understand as well as characterize existing network traffic and environment, and analysis of tradeoffs and technical goals3.
  • Ability to monitor as well as optimize network performance including maintaining the overall quality of user experience
  • Knowledge on application of a methodology to network design as well as designing of remote connectivity
  • learning to design IP addressing and selection of routing protocols
  • Knowledge related to modularizing and structuring the network
  • Aiding in the development of a physical and logical design including design network topology
  • Testing, optimizing, and documenting the network design
  • Enabling optimization of the network environment for superior performance

One of the top benefits of CCDA certification program enables professional to develop network design solutions at an infrastructure level to suffice the need of large customer networks. For more information on how you can get started earning your CCDA, fill out the form below to receive pricing information and a course syllabus for our award winning training.

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