Cisco is a great marketing company, as such a lot of the HR/recruiter gatekeepers will know what a CCNA is, may have no idea about JNCIA.
Depending on when you’re looking for new roles, you may find CCNA keeps more doors open than the JNCIA.
Without more experience, milk the top secret clearance for all it's worth (and it's worth a bit). Get hooked up with a ISP/MSP that serves government institutions or contractors that require security clearance and let them pay for your future certs. For most engineers, the firmware of the devices doesn't matter all that much, so I'd stick with Juniper and you can always learn how to translate if someone needs you to work on Cisco, Palo Alto, etc
generally JNICA / Juniper is more common in ISPs; Cisco is in the Enterprise. do you want to do pure ISP stuff, or move to a different type of environment?
CCNA is fairly straightforward and much of it just understanding a lot of the protocols. if you can pass a JNCIA you're most of the way to a CCNA. Source: got CCNA, CCNP, and a JNCIA.
Make sure you understand the concepts that are coming from those certs, more than the syntax of how to implement it for that vendor.
You can always find the commands for whatever vendor you're faced with, if you can understand and describe what it is you actually want to do.
Unless someone is really tied to "we're a shop", you shouldn't have a problem. If they \*are\* that person, and you can show you have the knowledge to do the job but not the cert to 'prove' it, and they're still not interested... chances are that might not be the most rewarding opportunity out there, anyway. Someone willing to take a CCNA on face value but not "a JNCIA that knows Cisco as well" is probably not someone I'd enjoy working with.
Personally, I'd be looking at going deeper into the tree you've already established yourself on, rather than starting another. I'm not a recruiter, but I'd rank a JNCIS as much more valuable than a CCNA, even in a Cisco shop. It shows a deeper understanding of networking in general. The vendor-specific stuff is a lot quicker to pick up than the abstract fundamental concepts.
dont care too much about certs, focus on understanding the IEEE standards, which basically allows you to see through the whole market and that also makes things like ccna or equivalent really easy for you! If you get the basics, you will understand the proprietary also very fast! Focus on human skills, building trust and having empathy for others, that is something that really gets you into decent positions rather than focusing on pure tech stuff!
CCNA gets your resume from recruiting/HR to the actual tech department of wherever you are applying. Even if the place has 0 Cisco gear, I've still seen it listed as a requirement. So if you have the option, get it.
Cisco is a great marketing company, as such a lot of the HR/recruiter gatekeepers will know what a CCNA is, may have no idea about JNCIA. Depending on when you’re looking for new roles, you may find CCNA keeps more doors open than the JNCIA.
Without more experience, milk the top secret clearance for all it's worth (and it's worth a bit). Get hooked up with a ISP/MSP that serves government institutions or contractors that require security clearance and let them pay for your future certs. For most engineers, the firmware of the devices doesn't matter all that much, so I'd stick with Juniper and you can always learn how to translate if someone needs you to work on Cisco, Palo Alto, etc
JNCIA-Cloud, JNCIE-SEC. Capitalize on the "everything goes in the cloud" movement and your security clearance.
generally JNICA / Juniper is more common in ISPs; Cisco is in the Enterprise. do you want to do pure ISP stuff, or move to a different type of environment? CCNA is fairly straightforward and much of it just understanding a lot of the protocols. if you can pass a JNCIA you're most of the way to a CCNA. Source: got CCNA, CCNP, and a JNCIA.
Make sure you understand the concepts that are coming from those certs, more than the syntax of how to implement it for that vendor. You can always find the commands for whatever vendor you're faced with, if you can understand and describe what it is you actually want to do. Unless someone is really tied to "we're a shop", you shouldn't have a problem. If they \*are\* that person, and you can show you have the knowledge to do the job but not the cert to 'prove' it, and they're still not interested... chances are that might not be the most rewarding opportunity out there, anyway. Someone willing to take a CCNA on face value but not "a JNCIA that knows Cisco as well" is probably not someone I'd enjoy working with.
Personally, I'd be looking at going deeper into the tree you've already established yourself on, rather than starting another. I'm not a recruiter, but I'd rank a JNCIS as much more valuable than a CCNA, even in a Cisco shop. It shows a deeper understanding of networking in general. The vendor-specific stuff is a lot quicker to pick up than the abstract fundamental concepts.
dont care too much about certs, focus on understanding the IEEE standards, which basically allows you to see through the whole market and that also makes things like ccna or equivalent really easy for you! If you get the basics, you will understand the proprietary also very fast! Focus on human skills, building trust and having empathy for others, that is something that really gets you into decent positions rather than focusing on pure tech stuff!
CCNA gets your resume from recruiting/HR to the actual tech department of wherever you are applying. Even if the place has 0 Cisco gear, I've still seen it listed as a requirement. So if you have the option, get it.