Network engineers plan, design, implement, operate and manage networks.
That sounds great, but what does it mean? Let’s break it down and look at these in more detail. Please note that I group network engineer and network admin roles together. Others will associate network engineer roles with planning, design, and advanced support, and network admin roles with operational and support tasks.
Firstly, what is a network? A network is simply a bunch of stuff connected together. More specifically, the network itself is the underlying infrastructure that provides connectivity between two endpoints. Think of your phone playing a Youtube video. Your phone and the youtube server that stores the video are the two endpoints. The network is basically all the stuff in between that carries that video to your phone.
Planning and design is, well, designing the network. One or more engineers may work on the solution and produce various design documents, from network architecture to high-level design, to detailed design. The design takes into consideration the requirements for the network and the constraints or limitations the network has to work within.
Implementation generally covers the configuration of equipment. For new network builds it may also be the physical installation and connecting of equipment to the existing network.
Operations and management refer to the day-to-day activities that keep the network running. This may include monitoring, capacity planning, fixing faults, replacing failed hardware, upgrading software, and all manner of other activities.
The specifics of what any given network engineer does depends on the type of role they have and the organization they work for.
Types of Organizations Network Engineers Work For
It is worth noting that some companies act in many roles. Different departments within the same company may offer a combination of service provider, network management, and consultancy services.
Company Internal / End User Network / Enterprise Network
This is where you work on the internal or corporate network for a company. The network engineer role is part of the internal IT department. Depending on the size of the company you may specialize in a specific area of networking, or be across all aspects of the network and beyond. You may be across both design and operations activities.
Service Provider (ISP)/ Telco
In this type of environment, the network engineer is not part of the internal IT team. You work on a network that provides services to other people or companies for a fee. Common examples of services sold include Internet access and various WAN services.
Managed Service Provider (MSP)
Similar to Service Provider or Telco networking, MSP network engineers are not part of the internal IT team but instead manage many networks on behalf of other organizations. This is usually a billable role, with work being charged back to the customer. Design and operations are more likely to be split into different groups, but they normally work closely together.
Consultancy
When employed by a consulting company, you are a billable resource, and work on client networks. This is similar to MSP type work, and many MSPs will offer consultancy services.
Typically a consultancy will be brought in by an organization to provide additional knowledge or expertise that their in-house IT team may not have. It may be a large piece of work to design and implement a new network for hand-off to another team to manage, or it could be a few hours of providing advice on how best to execute a specific task.
Vendor
Vendors are all the companies that make and sell network equipment. I separate them out because I don’t think they fit well into the other categories.
There are a variety of roles in a vendor, some of which include:
- Support functions like the Technical Assistance Centre (TAC). These help customers with faults and queries.
- Pre-sales functions, which may help a customer to select the best device for their needs or provide assistance with design queries. Pre-sales may also create Proof-of-Concept (PoC) designs or implementations to show the equipment can perform a certain task.
- Professional services function, to help a customer design or implement a solution based on their equipment.
Vendors will also have research and development teams or product engineering teams. I don’t tend to group these with network engineering roles, but others may have different opinions.
Types of role / Day in the Life
Below is a list of some activities a network engineer may perform during their day. A given role may do some, all, or none of these things.
Operations / Network Management / Network Support
On any given day, operations or support engineers may work on
- Network monitoring
- Faults or support tickets
- On-Call for after-hours faults
- Managing vendor support cases
- Planning changes and change control process
- Software upgrades of network devices.
- Implement planned changes, either fault fixing or as part of project implementation.
- Updating network documentation
- Depending on the role, hardware installation
- Shipping and testing faulty parts and their replacement units
- Testing of proposed fixes or solutions from vendor support
- Provisioning of new customer connections.
- Deploy new hardware, and replace faulty hardware.
- Meetings – project, team, case review meetings, etc
Design / Consultancy / Professional Services
Design, consultancy, and professional services perform similar tasks as each other.
- Solution design and consultation, either internally or with customers
- Creation or updating of designs and diagrams
- Planning of migration activities to replace network elements
- Assist with Statement of Work (SoW) creation and project estimations
- Act as an escalation point for the operations or support engineers
- Implement project-related changes
- Peer review the work of colleagues.
- Project manage smaller pieces of work that do not require a full-time project manager
- Meetings – project, team, etc
- Mentor other team members
What Types Of Networks Do Network Engineers Work On?
There are a few different ways of looking at this question.
The usual answer to this question is technology or function-based and talks about Campus or Local Area Networks (LAN), Wide Area Networks (WAN), Data Centre (DC), Wifi networks, Cloud based networks, and so on.
Looking at it from a type of industry perspective, then we can break the networks down as Government, Utility, Telco/ISP/SP, Education or school, Health, Finance, Corporate, and so many more.
If we consider size, then networks range from major globe spanning operations all the way down to a small business or retail location with just a handful of network devices. What might be a really large network in one country might be considered small in another.
In short, network engineers work on deployments of all different types, sizes, and levels of complexity.
For other information about network engineering, have a look at this list of common network engineering job questions.