I’m in a government contractor roll as a security analyst, official title ISSE. I do vulnerability scanning, patching, NIST audit preparation, and a few other tasks. I’m pretty new in my career.

I want to switch to private sectors sometime within the next 2-4 years. My degree is about to be finished, which skills should I start to build or certifications should I get to have a strong enough skill set to apply for some engineer position at big name companies. I know government work is often looked down on so don’t comment on that please lol I’m trying to switch early in my career. My plan is to start mastering Linux and python on the side. I have networking experience, but haven’t done any networking in a while, if I don’t want to get into networking security how much networking skills do I need besides a strong understanding of networking concepts? Any skills I should focus my efforts on?

I’m interested in the oscp even though I don’t want to do pen testing lol just thought having a good understanding of vulnerability exploitation could strengthen my ability to defend.

I plan on study and growing my skills nonstop through out my career and really making myself a good well rounded expert one day, please don’t tear me apart on here lol always afraid to post on this subreddit because everyone seems so aggressive if you don’t know your shit inside and out.