Network Engineering Job Questions

There are lots of questions about network engineering jobs. This post answers some of the more common questions.

You may also like to look at what a network engineer does.

Do network engineers make good money?

In general, yes. How much will depend on many factors including experience, geographic location, and type of employer.

Treat the figures below as a guideline. Salaries vary, and starting roles may be lower paid than what is shown here. Likewise, senior roles can earn more.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t specifically list network engineers, but Network and Computer Systems Administrators have a median pay of $80,600 while Computer Network Architects have a median pay of $120,520.

The Dice.com Salary Report for 2022 listed the average Network Engineer salary at $93,373

For the UK, recruitment site reed.co.nz has the average salary at £55,822, while roberthalf.co.uk has average salaries between £50,000 and £60,000 depending on location.

For Australia, Seek puts the average network engineer salary between $100,000 and $120,000  Or Indeed puts it at $105,164 AUD.

Do I need a degree to be a network engineer?

No, you do not need a degree to be a network engineer. In some cases, a degree may be helpful, but you can certainly be a great network engineer without one.

HR may use having a degree as a hiring filter to reduce the number of applications they need to look through. Often you can try citing relevant experience if you have been working in IT for several years to get around this.

It should be noted that the question of whether you need a degree for a specific job is not the same as the question of whether a degree is beneficial to you in the future. Just because you don’t need one to be a network engineer, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider a degree for other reasons.

Do I need a vendor certification to be a network engineer?

The answer is essentially yes. Strictly speaking, you don’t need them, but in the early part of your career they can be incredibly helpful

A certification can help get through the initial part of the hiring process by ticking the “has X cert” requirement, similar to the requirement some roles list for a degree. In effect, employers use the certificate as a proxy for “has X level of network knowledge”.  Remember though, that certifications are a foot in the door, and not a guarantee of a job.

As you progress in your career, certifications may become less relevant as you have more experience and accomplishments to show a potential employer.

For some companies though, there is a requirement that they have a minimum number of staff certified at a certain level to meet their partnering requirements with various equipment vendors. These companies can be very keen to have you already certified, or for you to become certified soon after joining them.

Does network engineering require math?

It requires some math, most of which can be learned along the way.

Commonly you will convert between number bases. For example converting between decimal, binary (base 2), and hexadecimal (base 16). There is also some Boolean logic – AND, OR, NOT. 

Having a better understanding of math may make some of the concepts easier to learn, but it is not essential. 

Do I have to be smart to be a network engineer?

I sometimes think the question of being “smart enough” is really someone asking “am I good enough?” or “can I do this?” The answer is yes, you can do this. Everything in networking and IT in general is something you can learn. Don’t let yourself, or anyone else, decide you can’t do something because you’re not “smart”.

Anyone is capable of being a network engineer, it is just a matter of learning some new knowledge and skills. Remember that even the best network engineers of today had to learn subnetting and the OSI model at some stage.

That said, to be a good engineer, there are some other things you need to develop in addition to purely technical knowledge. 

The ability to think critically and methodically – what order do I need to perform these actions in, what is going to happen when I perform these actions and is this going to impact anything? Where should I start looking to solve this current fault?

The ability to learn and research – you will constantly need to learn new things or to research the answer to a problem that you have not come across before.

The ability to apply knowledge and experience to a new issue or situation. Can you identify if this is similar to a previous situation you have seen and whether a similar approach will work? Can you approach it from a new perspective?

The ability to persevere – some topics will be difficult to learn, and some problems hard to solve, but if you continue to work at it, you’ll eventually solve what you need to. 

Perhaps most importantly, the ability to communicate clearly with other people of different technical abilities. 

Do network engineers have a good work-life balance / what hours do they work?

Most network engineering jobs are typically around the 40-hour-a-week mark, and the work-life balance can be good. But it does need to be managed.

Due to the criticality of the network, companies often want changes done outside of core business hours. This can lead to planned work or changes needing to be done in the evening, early morning, or during weekends.

If you are part of an on-call roster, then after-hours call-outs can also occur at any time, interrupting sleep and possibly limiting the activities you can do whilst you are on call.

Hours worked outside of business hours are usually paid as overtime, or taken as time off in lieu. This will depend on your employer. For example, if you have already worked a 40-hour week, and then work an additional 8 hours during the weekend as part of a planned change, that additional 8 hours may be paid out, or recorded as adding to a time off in lieu balance which can be used as leave at a later date.

Depending on the employer, Network Engineering roles may have some flexibility in the timing of their work. This means being able to start earlier or later and finish work correspondingly earlier or later. There is sometimes the flexibility to start earlier, stop part way through the day and do some personal tasks, and then continue the rest of the day and make up the time later in the day or week.

Something else to consider for work-life balance is the amount of their own time a lot of network engineers put into their professional development, whether that is time studying towards certifications, upskilling or simply staying across new trends in the networking field.

Is Network Engineering Stressful?

In general, it should be no more stressful than any other job, but there can be stressful situations.

It is normal for some events to be stress-inducing. Large network outages or impacts to mission-critical services come to mind, as do planned network changes that do not go as expected. Projects with tight timeframes or that are badly managed can sometimes be stressful as well. 

Is Network Engineering a Matter of Life and Death?

For most enterprise-type networks, network engineering is not usually a matter of life and death. If the network stops operating it will be an annoyance, the management team might be unhappy, and some money might be lost, but ultimately no one dies. 

There are other networks, however, where the network has safety of life services running over it, and an outage is a much bigger issue. Some obvious examples include networks used by medical facilities or emergency services. In an ideal world, they will have a contingency plan to cover such an event.

One less obvious example is utility companies. The electrical system for example can be in some pretty remote places, where there is little or no cell phone coverage. The utility may implement some form of digital radio system that uses the network to backhaul the traffic. If the network has an outage, workers in remote locations may not be able to communicate with the control center to safely coordinate the work they are undertaking.

Can network engineers work remotely?

Yes, with some caveats. It depends on the actual work being done, and the employer.

Even when working from the office, most network engineers are accessing equipment across the country or around the world anyway. Provided you can VPN into the corporate network, you can usually manage a network from anywhere

If you are the type of network engineer responsible for physically installing and connecting equipment, then obviously that is hard to do remotely.

Some employers require their staff to come into the office. This can be due to management decisions or the security requirements of the network involved.

Do Network engineers need to know how to programme (code)?

It is not a hard requirement for most network engineers to be able to code, but it is a good idea to learn the basics. A lot of network jobs are now seeking scripting skills and experience. I can only see that increasing in the future.

Network Engineers are not going to be programming large applications, but often make use of shell scripting in Bash, or use Python to automate minor tasks. Python is also becoming popular due to network automation and tools like Ansible. 

Do network engineers need to know Linux / Unix?

Although not strictly necessary, I highly recommend learning how to work in a Linux environment to anyone looking to be a network engineer. The key thing, to begin with, is being comfortable with the CLI, moving around the environment, working with files, and getting familiar with common unix tools.

Depending on the network engineering role you find yourself in, you may have to look after or interact with Network Management Systems (NMS), Syslog, DHCP, DNS, or RADIUS servers. Many of these run on Linux or some flavor of UNIX.

Linux is also often used as a bastion server or jump host. Network engineers often aren’t allowed to access network devices directly from the corporate network, and have to first login to the bastion server, and from there log in to the network devices.

Is network engineering hard?

Network engineering doesn’t have to be hard. 

Difficulty is a relative thing. At the start, there is a lot to learn which makes it seem difficult, but once you understand the basics it will become easier as the concepts build on what you have already learned. Over time what you thought was hard, will become easy, and there will be something new to learn.

When you are more experienced the difficulty is less with the concepts or technology in use and more in the complexity of the network design. 

Does network engineering require travel?

Travel requirements are heavily dependent on the role and the company you work for. You should ask any potential employers about how much travel and what sort of travel distance is required by a role.

Some sales engineering roles may be more travel heavy due to in-person sales meetings and presentations to clients.

Some operational and implementation roles may require travel to remote sites for fault resolution, new installations, or planned work.

For all network engineers, there may be a need to travel for training courses or professional development. More recently, however, a lot of training and certification testing can be done remotely online.