What Salary Can You Expect With CCNA?

Most salary articles hand you a confident range and move on. This one does something more useful: it shows you what the available data actually says, explains why the headline number misleads newcomers, walks through the factors that move CCNA pay up or down, and gives you a method for finding the figure that applies to you — because a locally researched number beats any global average.

The one named data point, read properly

The Skillsoft survey (run by Skillsoft/Global Knowledge, with roughly 863 respondents holding at least one Cisco certification, about half of them US-based) is the only large, dated, named source behind most "Cisco salary" headlines. Its US averages for Cisco certifications include:

Certification	Average US salary (Skillsoft 2024 survey)	Caveat
CCNA	$112,333	Survey average, all experience levels
CCNP Enterprise	$144,912	Survey average
CCNP Collaboration	$134,694	Survey average
CCNP Security	$168,159	Fewer than 100 responses — quote cautiously
CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure	$166,524	Fewer than 100 responses — quote cautiously

Three things about this table matter more than the numbers themselves. First, these are averages of people who hold the certification, not salaries caused by it — a fifteen-year veteran who keeps an active CCNA drags the average up without telling you anything about starting pay. Second, the figures are US-only and not adjusted for cost of living, so they say little about pay in the UK, Europe, Asia or Africa, or even about the gap between San Francisco and rural Ohio. Third, they date from a 2024 survey window; treat them as a snapshot, not a promise.

Read this way, the table still earns its keep: it shows the shape of the ladder. Within one consistent dataset, professional-level certification holders average tens of thousands of dollars more than associate-level holders — useful evidence that the Cisco track as a whole pays off over time, whatever your exact starting point.

Why entry-level pay sits well below the average

The jobs a fresh CCNA typically opens — help desk, network operations centre (NOC) technician, network technician, junior administrator — sit at the bottom of the IT pay scale in every market. That is not a flaw in the certification; it is what entry-level means. The certification's financial effect at this stage is usually not a dramatically higher starting salary but three quieter advantages:

• Access: you get shortlisted for networking-track roles that filter out uncertified applicants, and those tracks out-earn generalist support work within a few years.
• Differentiation: between two entry-level candidates, the certified one more often gets the offer, which shortens expensive months of job searching.
• Negotiation footing: a recognised credential gives you something concrete to anchor on when an employer's first offer is soft.

You will find plenty of round entry-level figures online — community estimates on salary aggregation sites and forums. Treat all of them as informal, unverified and often stale; none comes from a source rigorous enough to plan around, which is why this article does not repeat them as fact.

Which job titles those entry rungs actually are — and how people land them — is its own subject, covered in what jobs you can get with a CCNA.

The four factors that move your number

Role

Within the same company, a NOC technician, a network administrator and a network support engineer with identical certifications earn differently, because pay follows responsibility rather than credentials. Roles that own production infrastructure or sit closer to engineering pay more than first-line support; roles at managed service providers often trade slightly lower pay for much faster experience accumulation, which raises your price at the next move.

Experience

Experience is the dominant variable, and it compounds with the certification rather than competing with it. A realistic scenario: a help desk analyst with two years of ticket-queue experience who adds a CCNA is a far stronger salary candidate than a fresh CCNA holder with neither — the certification validates the experience, and the experience validates the certification. This is also why the Skillsoft average is high: it is full of exactly such people, years further along.

Region

Salaries for the same title vary enormously between countries and between cities within a country, driven by local demand and cost of living. The Skillsoft figures are US averages; applying them anywhere else — or even uncritically within the US — will mislead you. Region is the factor you can least control and most need to research locally (a method for that below).

Employer type

Enterprises with mature networks, service providers, integrators and public-sector bodies all price networking talent differently. Larger organisations tend to pay more for the same title but promote more slowly; smaller ones stretch your remit (and your learning) wider than the salary suggests. Shift-based NOC roles sometimes carry premiums for nights and weekends — modest money, but real at the entry level.