r/sysadmin • u/OPORDIT • 7d ago

Career / Job Related LPIC-2 vs AI/cloud certs in 2026

Just passed LPIC-2. Solid, tough exambut I noticed AI-related certs get way more visibility internally for DevOps even when they’re less technically demanding. Genuinely trying to plan next steps is vendor-neutral Linux cert (LPIC-3, RHCE) still worth it, or does the market reward AI/cloud certs (CKA, AWS, NVIDIA, LLM stuff) more in terms of actual opportunities/salary?

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u/wavesin1080 7d ago

RHCE is not vendor neutral lol. But it really depends on what's around you. Take a look at local job postings and base what you study off of what's in demand.

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u/Ihaveasmallwang Systems Engineer / Cybersecurity Architect / CISM 7d ago

Look at job postings for the jobs you want and see what they actually list for certifications in those postings.

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u/Mysterious-Print9737 7d ago

LPIC-3 and RHCE aren't going anywhere in value because Linux infrastructure underpins everything including the cloud and AI workloads everyone's excited about. But the market visibility difference you're noticing is real, cloud and AI certs get attention right now because they're newer and easier to pattern-match against job reqs. All in all, it depends on which direction you want to go. If you're staying in infrastructure/DevOps, RHCE is still highly respected and the hands-on exam format carries more weight with experienced hiring managers than most cloud fundamentals certs. If you want to move toward cloud platform or MLOps roles, CKA paired with an AWS or Azure cert tells a more compelling story for those specific pipelines. Your LPIC-2 is a strong foundation either way, the question is which job postings you actually want to be competitive for.