places like California, Texas, Virginia, New York, and Illinois, where tech job growth is strongest

Silicone Valley is driving strong tech job growth in California, and a particularly strong economy is spurring tech company moves and expansions in Texas, particularly in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area and other large cities. But those going into jobs as network support engineers have even stronger job potential if they possess virtualization skills. Most data centers are either already working heavily with virtualized environments or plan to be in the near future. Job candidates with virtualization skills have a better chance at landing the job they want and can command higher salaries than those without virtualization on their resumes. Virtualization lowers data center costs, and in many cases can help keep the IT architecture safer and more secure. About half of all data centers are working with virtualized environments network support engineers with virtualization skills, Some companies go so far as to develop a new position, called the network virtualization engineer. This role is just now catching on in the workplace, but is expected to become more prominent as virtualization continues to dominate enterprise data centers. The network virtualization engineer is responsible for configuring, managing, and monitoring the virtualized environment.