It has been an incredibly busy and productive start to 2026. If you’ve followed my work for a while, you know that at my core, I am a Network Engineer. However, I’ve always believed that a solid understanding of the “pipes” is only half the battle. My curiosity for how the rest of the stack lives and breathes has driven me to spend this quarter bridging the gap between traditional infrastructure and modern cloud-native ecosystems.
Here is the breakdown of the certifications I’ve earned during the first few months of 2026:
To better understand the workloads running on top of the networks I build, I dove deep into the CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) landscape:
LFCS (Linux Foundation Certified Systems Administrator): Solidifying the Linux fundamentals that serve as the bedrock for all modern systems.
CGOA (Certified GitOps Associate) & CAPA (Certified Argo Project Associate): Exploring the world of “Operations by Pull Request.” These certifications represent my deep dive into declarative CI/CD and the Argo ecosystem.
PCA (Prometheus Certified Associate) & OTCA (OpenTelemetry Certified Associate): Because a network is only as good as its visibility. These focus on the future of observability and standardizing how we collect telemetry data.
While I’m exploring new territories, I haven’t forgotten my roots. Keeping my networking and security skills sharp remains a top priority:
JNCIP-SP (Juniper Networks Certified Professional, Service Provider Routing & Switching): A significant milestone in my networking career, focusing on the complex routing protocols that power service provider environments.
AWS Certified Security – Specialty (Recertification): Security isn’t a “one and done” task. I’ve officially renewed my AWS Security credentials to stay current with evolving cloud threats.
Being a Network Engineer in 2026 means more than just configuring routers; it means understanding how applications deploy, how they scale, and how they communicate across distributed systems. This Q1 “sprint” was about satisfying that curiosity and ensuring I can speak the language of both the infrastructure and the developer.