Approaches are disclosed for virtualizing a network management protocol (NMP). A network element offloads processes for communicating in the NMP to a virtualization engine (e.g., a backend virtualization proxy for the network element). The network element transmits a message containing a NMP request to the virtualization engine using service function chaining (SFC) by inserting service plane protocol data (e.g., a network service header (NSH)) into the message (e.g., an impregnated request). The virtualization engine expropriates, from the network element, processes for communicating in the NMP and can, thereby, reduce the computational resources used by the network element for communicating in the NMP. The virtualization engine generates a NMP response to the NMP request. The virtualization engine transmits a different message containing the NMP response to the network element using SFC by inserting service plane protocol data into the message (e.g., an impregnated response).