Network Engineer

Yes — and the cloud move has made it more interesting, not less. Cloud workloads still need networks: VPCs, transit gateways, ExpressRoute and Direct Connect circuits, firewalls, load balancers, and Zero Trust overlays. The real shift is that the skill mix has changed. Network engineers who know only legacy CLI configuration are seeing roles compressed; network engineers who can write Python, deploy network changes through Terraform, and design hybrid connectivity to cloud platforms are in stronger demand than ever. Cisco's DevNet track and AWS Advanced Networking Specialty exist precisely because the discipline rewards engineers who can bridge both worlds.

If you're targeting a network engineering career specifically, start with CCNA. It's the credential that hiring managers actually look for in network job postings, and it covers the protocols at the depth real engineering work requires. Network+ is the better choice if you're still deciding between networking, security, and general IT — it's vendor-neutral, broader, and lighter on specifics. Many candidates take Network+ first as a confidence builder before moving to CCNA, which is also a reasonable path. The mistake is taking Network+ thinking it satisfies what a CCNA position requires; in most network engineer postings, it doesn't.

For senior architecture roles in Cisco-heavy environments, yes. CCIE remains the most prestigious networking credential in the industry, and CCIE-certified engineers continue to command salary premiums north of $150K. That said, the path is significantly harder than the cloud-vendor equivalents — it requires extensive hands-on lab time and an eight-hour practical exam — and the ROI calculation has shifted as cloud networking has expanded the market. Most engineers today get more lifetime value from CCNP plus a cloud networking specialty (AZ-700 or AWS Advanced Networking) than from CCIE alone, unless the target employer specifically requires it.

Increasingly central. Cisco's DevNet certification track exists because the company recognized that the network engineer's job has expanded from configuring devices to programming infrastructure. Senior network engineers who can write Python, use Ansible for configuration management, deploy network changes through CI/CD pipelines, and apply infrastructure-as-code patterns to network state are commanding $20K to $30K premiums over peers without those skills. You don't need to be a software engineer — but you should be comfortable enough with code to read a Python script, modify an Ansible playbook, and submit a pull request without panicking.

Network Engineers spend more time operating, configuring, and troubleshooting — the day-to-day work of keeping networks running. Network Architects spend more time designing, evaluating trade-offs, and producing the diagrams and standards that engineers implement. The transition usually happens around 7 to 10 years of experience, with CCIE or a cloud-networking specialty as the credential gate. Architects in cloud-heavy environments often hold AWS Advanced Networking Specialty or AZ-700 in addition to a CCNP or CCIE, because modern enterprise architecture rarely sits in one vendor's stack anymore.

The repetitive parts — generating config templates, analyzing routine logs, identifying common misconfigurations, and routine policy enforcement — are increasingly automated. The judgment-heavy parts — designing for cost-versus-resilience trade-offs, troubleshooting genuinely novel outages, navigating cross-vendor migrations, communicating with security and application teams — are getting more valuable. Network engineers who treat AI tools and intent-based networking as productivity multipliers, while focusing their human time on architecture and incident leadership, are seeing compensation rise. The ones limited to CLI work are seeing the labor market consolidate around fewer, more skilled roles.