Cisco Environment vs Juniper for Junior Engineer

pujan96

deleted

Mooseboost

You will not frequently see Juniper certifications as a requirement for many positions. Cisco certifications are de facto standard in networking, so you will likely see those listed for positions that are not 100% Cisco shops.

I have worked with both Juniper and Cisco. There are a few differences between them and other than CLI syntax and some proprietary stuff you won't have too much difficulty in crosstraining between the two. There is no reason to avoid Juniper positions unless your goal is to stay in a 100% Cisco environment. I am seeing more and more enterprises switch from the "one vendor" model to a mixed vendor model. Yes, you will lose some of the subtle knowledge (quirks in OS versions, etc) when you shift from primarily working with one vendor to another but as long as you are a solid engineer you shouldn't struggle with swinging back.

Don't let job descriptions fool you. I have seen companies that put "Must have x years in Cisco" when the majority of their network is mixed vendor.

networker050184

I wouldn't be worried about it affecting your career. I've gone back and forth in my career without issue. The ISP experience will be good for you to really get your hands on some real large scale networking. Experience like that is always good to have.

As far as certifications go, Cisco are definitely more popular so that'd be my suggestion to where you concentrate in the short term.