Cryptologic Technician (Networks)
DISESTABLISHED (June 2023, NAVADMIN 147/23). Replaced by CWT (Cyber Warfare Technician). CTN sailors were redesignated to the new CWT rating.
“You'll conduct network cryptologic operations adjacent to NSA — working with signals, network traffic, and cyber intelligence at the highest classification levels. The TS/SCI clearance with polygraph, combined with the specific technical skills CTNs develop in Navy cyber and SIGINT environments, creates a post-military hiring profile that NSA and its contractor community target specifically. Cyber Command and cleared defense contractors — Booz Allen, SAIC, Leidos — maintain consistent recruiting pipelines for CTN veterans because the combination of technical depth and operational experience with SIGINT systems cannot be easily replicated through civilian hiring.”
You are Navy cyber, which means your clearance is TS/SCI before you've bought your first set of NWUs, and you will spend your career doing work that cannot be fully described on a resume. The pipeline starts at A school and goes to C school and by the time you're finished with training the Navy has invested more in you than a four-year degree costs, which is part of why the re-enlistment bonuses exist. The work itself ranges from network defense — watching traffic flows and anomalies on government networks that range from modern to 'what year is this router from' — to more forward-leaning mission sets that you will describe on LinkedIn as 'SIGINT and cyber operations' and leave it at that. CYBERCOM, Fleet Cyber Command, the various CTF commands: the operational billets are real and consequential. The contractor-to-government pipeline after separation is the fastest in the military. Companies like Booz Allen, SAIC, Leidos, and ManTech have entire recruiting programs for CTNs. The private sector cyber salary you were promised is real. You'll spend your first week wondering why nobody here seems worried enough.
MOS Intel
- 1CTN is the single best enlisted rating in the Navy for post-military earning potential. TS/SCI + cyber skills + experience = $120K+ on day one as a civilian.
- 2Get every certification the Navy will pay for. Stack them like your career depends on it — because it does.
- 3Network relentlessly with NSA civilians, contractors, and the broader cyber community. Your next job will come through connections, not job boards.
CTN might be the best-kept secret in the entire military. The combination of TS/SCI clearance, world-class cyber training, and operational experience creates a career path that civilian cybersecurity professionals envy. The recruiter probably doesn't fully understand what CTNs do — the work is classified and the rating is relatively new. The honest truth: if you can get through the training pipeline (it's hard and the attrition is real), you will walk out of the Navy with credentials worth more than most master's degrees. The catch is that some assignments are more operational than others, and Navy bureaucracy can still find ways to waste your time. But the floor for post-Navy earning potential is incredibly high.
What this actually is in the real world
Your skills translate. Here's what civilian employers call this job — and what they pay.
Intelligence Analysts
Strong matchComputer Systems Analysts
Related fieldData Scientists
Related fieldSalary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, retrieved Feb 2026. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.
How exposed is the civilian version of this job to AI?
Not a measurement of this MOS. Published labor-market research on the closest civilian occupation in our crosswalk — treat it as a signal, not a verdict.
Closest civilian match: Intelligence Analysts (close match)
Report writing, pattern analysis, and briefing production are the core of the job — real, meaningful LLM exposure (40%) in the 2023 study. Frey & Osborne’s 2013 appendix never scored "Intelligence Analysts" as a distinct occupation (it wasn’t broken out as its own line in their 702-job list), so there’s no comparable 2013-era number — we’re not going to borrow one from a neighboring title and pretend it fits.
This describes exposure for the civilian occupation, not a rating of this MOS, your unit, or your actual day-to-day duties. The matched civilian job is a close or related crosswalk, not exact.
Exposure research: Eloundou et al., "GPTs are GPTs" (arXiv preprint) (2023); Eloundou et al., Science 384(6702):1306-1308 (DOI 10.1126/science.adj0998) (2024); Eloundou et al. published occupation-level data (occ_level.csv) (2023).
Read the full methodology and see how much of the MOS catalog is scored so far on the AI/Automation Displacement Risk tool.
MOS Pulse
Anonymous · One tap · No accountThree seconds of your time, zero of your identity. This is how the honest picture of CTN gets built — one tap at a time.
Knowing what you know now — would you pick CTN again?
Did your recruiter describe this job accurately?
Hours per week this job actually takes in garrison?
That tap took 3 seconds. A full review takes 10 minutes — and does about 100x more for the next person staring at this contract.
Write the Full Review →Nobody’s gone first. Yet.
Zero reviews for CTN. Not because nobody has opinions — anyone who’s actually done Cryptologic Technician (Networks) is carrying a full magazine of them — but because nobody’s put theirs on the record.
So here’s the deal: the first approved review of every MOS becomes its Founding Review. Permanently badged, permanently first. Every person who looks up CTN from now on reads it before anything else — including the recruiter’s version.
We could fill this page with fake reviews tonight. Plenty of sites do. We never will — which means this space stays exactly this empty until someone who lived it goes first.
Anonymous by default — no name, no unit, fuzzy timestamps. Your chain of command never knows it was you.
CTN Cryptologic Technician (Networks) — FAQ
Q01What does a CTN do in the Navy?
Q02What security clearance does a CTN need?
Q03What does a day in the life of a CTN look like?
Q04What civilian jobs does CTN translate to?
Q05How often do CTN soldiers deploy?
Q06What's the recruiter not telling me about CTN?
Sources:Branch MOS catalog · DTMO pay tables · DoD/.gov benefits references · O*NET civilian career mapping · verified service-member reviews