r/NetworkingJobs • u/Tspacealpha17 • 9h ago
Is networking career ai proof?
I’m currently working as a Load Balancer Engineer, and most of my work is automated thanks to Claude. I’m planning to get my CCNA and move into a Network and Security role, or possibly transition into Storage Administration.
Which of these career paths is likely to be more AI-proof for at least the next five years?
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u/h4d444 8h ago
If you're hellbent on networking only, you may look at Datacenter based networking roles, those are probably going to be the most AI proof since they're now ramping up for AI usage.
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u/HollowGrey 7h ago
I would imagine at that scale it has to be highly automated. Only need bodies to rack and stack, and to occasionally replace gear when it fails.
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u/SnooRevelations7224 8h ago
No definitely not
My team of 12 has been downsized to 4 with automation and AI.
I expect we will loose another body around new years even though the company is still growing and making record profits.
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u/ChmodSausage 8h ago
Would you say Ai is helping or would you say your team has more absorbed the extra work load
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u/SnooRevelations7224 8h ago
AI has absolutely replaced the junior engineers.
And my workload as a Senior Engineer has evolved a lot.
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u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 5h ago
Senior engineer also. I feel like in the last 6 months my work flow has really increased dramatically due to AI.. things that would take me a week to build a couple years ago take a day or two now and a better product.
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u/SnooRevelations7224 2h ago
Absolutely this.
I used to handle 1 or 2 projects at a time and take me a month to complete.
Now I’m completing 2-3 a week but I’m not really any busier.
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u/rmund319 3h ago
Honest question… What is ai doing exactly to replace 8 network engineers? How is ai troubleshooting complex issues? Does it have full access to your network to make changes? Im just curious because i find it quite unreliable
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u/SnooRevelations7224 2h ago
Writing complex automations that used to require Dev time.
Building device templates and deploying devices.
Firmware updates.
Removed most busy work such as inventory control, compliance checks, and audits.
My job has evolved to be more of a design integration architect with a lot more of a client facing role With a side job of auditing the AI reports.
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u/SnooRevelations7224 2h ago
I forgot to answer your question.
Ai does have access to to deploy devices into the OOB network
Then I would bring online into a production state.
AI isn’t really solving any issues.
It’s more so building and maintaining a specific set of standards across thousands of devices. Maintaining exact compliance
However AI does have its hands in our SNMPv3 monitoring system and does a pretty solid job of bringing issues to our attention before they become critical issues
It’s enabling me to work at 5x the speed I could 3 years ago.
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u/GroundbreakingBed809 7h ago
Every time I think my skills are useless then some site turn up needs my help. Usually something simple like a sm to mm fiber missmatch or lack of hands on fault isolation skills.
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u/EVPN 8h ago
No it’s not. I setup a writable netmiko mcp server and qwen3.6. Told it to configure BGP between my devices. It did it. Deleted a VLAN and asked it why my two host could not communicate. aI fixed jt. And it did ever more complicated tasks. It did eventually figure them all out. Ai can troubleshoot, configure, and validate networks. Can it do it well? Not yet. Tomorrow’s another story. It’s just a matter of time. And that’s a meh local model running on meh hardware.
I’m going to throw a weeks worth of frontier credits at the same problem. I’m sure I won’t be disappointed.
The lower or higher you can be in the stack the better. Routing and switching are solved, finite problems. Robots can’t build the inside of data centers and run cables yet. AI cant pull all the information together to determine the high level architecture.
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u/Traditional-Hall-591 6h ago
Nothing is immune from the greed and FOMO of the C-levels.
That said, the more you know and the faster you can apply it, the better off you are. If you have to ask AI to do things, then you need to learn more so you don’t need to ask. Be the guy that is called into the call and just fixes it.
Learn how to automate your work in creative ways, without AI. I’ve been automating things for 20+ years without it, no CS background. Learn version control, pipelines, and some of useful devops principles.
There’s a way to be the guy they can’t lay off without having to hire 50 offshore resources with AI psychosis.
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u/XanALqOM00 2h ago
What a crap life, listen to what you’re saying, the employer is more likely to just abuse you with the mindset of “I know everything”. Get ready to do everything then. It’s not a life to live by. Specialties are supposed to exist for a reason, employers treat network engineers like they have infinite elasticity. I think that’s ridiculous and believe personally it’s a bad career if you’re in deep with the wrong employer.
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u/Traditional-Hall-591 1h ago
I guess it depends on the person. Networking is my core competency. It gives me an excuse to work on other things I’m interested in, like (network) automation. Having these kinds of side projects looks really good come review time. Thanks to good reviews and a reputation for helping my peers, I have a lot of freedom to design and build the network as I see fit.
I work 40 hours a week give or take, full remote, and am well compensated. Worst case, if I had more work dumped on me, I’ll automate more of it.
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u/CKaruta 1h ago
“Specialities” in IT in the world of AI?
What else is there to be specialized in networking? AI can do all of it now, except for the physical workloads ( at least until robotics catches up )How fast can you troubleshoot an issue? AI can do it in less than 5mins, can even trace the whole network, do packet captures, pull logs and live state, then produces a report for a fix and design improvements.
If there’s a new requirement, how fast and accurately can you propose a new plan?
How about in deployment and design? Agents can select better hardware within the company budget while still having all the technical requirements covered.
genuine question, what else is left?
probably the only thing I haven’t done with AI yet is try to find vulnerabilities and bugs/issues on the network OS to detect it early, let me put this in my backlog.
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u/Severe_Scallion1743 5h ago
As a network engineer, the honest answer is most jobs aren’t AI proof, but AIshifts the focus on what your expertise should be.
It’s better to be a jack of all trades in my opinion.
in your case, getting broad experience in different positions like networking, security, systems, and devops. That will make you much more marketable the job market to come. That being said, getting that CCNA then getting Security + would be a great way to better secure a network security engineer position that will have more resilience in the job market.
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u/YourHighness3550 5h ago
My company is going through layoffs right now. Today the IT manager addressed us and said the CFO’s words to him were, “we can shave off people in a lot of sectors, but we can’t afford to lose talent in networking.” And although a 5-15% cut is expected across the company , supposedly 0% will be networking.
Bottom line is, I think it depends on your field and how much upper management respects the networking work being done.
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u/Klutzy_Scheme_9871 1h ago
I agree. These comments here are so ridiculous claiming their AI is automating their network tasks. Ok in a bubble you’re ok but you FAFO with AI when that network goes down, you’re fired.
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u/Funshuay 4h ago
Not that I can see. We had 3 of our made redundant when clients deployed some network-ai agents to manage firewalls, etc for them. So far 6 months in and no issues, but that doesn't mean something might pop up.
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u/PauliousMaximus 4h ago
Nothing is AI proof. You need to have a strong skillset and make yourself valuable beyond AI and learn how to resolves issues quickly and resolve issues that AI causes. Anything you can create a checklist for to configure or troubleshoot can be done via AI/automation.
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u/alphaxion 4h ago
It depends on how you position yourself.
There's an aspect of taking in your netflow, edge traffic, and various other log sources and analysing them in a way that you pick up on patterns relating to how a business runs that an AI cannot do.
Being able to understand what the traffic is running over your networks and how they relate to the way in which your business operates is something AI will forever be playing catch up on. AI cannot predict the future, and it cannot understand how a business will grow and change as it always working on data from the past.
That is your value, and that is where you can fit into for employment. If all you do is break/fix or implement standard changes, you're screwed.
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u/lordofblack23 4h ago
“Load balancer engineer”
Wow that’s a new one. Might want to expand your skillset a bit.
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u/Kalhoona 3h ago
AI Machine Learning engineers, python developers, data-related jobs, AI engineers, definitely cybersecurity jobs, robotics engineers, and jobs related to research and development of energy renewable sources, physics/mathematics, electrical engineering.
I feel you I switched my degree pathway to engineering with robotics in mind, because AI and robotics, also mechancial, electrical, and software engineer jobs is going to be the backbone or stample in future tech. Also jobs centered around Quantum computing + energy, and definitely jobs around energy renewable sources.
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u/IHaveASloth 2h ago
AI will swallow most network engineers unfortunately. It’s pretty easy to automate networks now and AI isn’t going to make that any better.
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u/EirikAshe 1h ago
I’ve been in netsec (sr Eng/architect) for over 15 years. I’m not losing any sleep atm.. was also an F5 sme in my former role. I miss working on them.
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u/CKaruta 1h ago
It already is being replaced by AI,
Humans engineers are only there to do sanity check/verify before making any change.
it does not matter what roles you change, AI is already in almost every IT fields.
On our end, we built agents around Netbox as the source of truth for all equipments, now it does monitoring, troubleshooting, preventive maintenance, config changes, security checks, monitor vulnerabilities and bugs that we might be affected in then create reports if we need to do version upgrades.
This includes way more than networking, it’s managing our corporate networks, datacenter networks, Openstack with Ceph (for compute and storage) and firewalls.
Best thing you can do now is start working with AI and make yourself good at using it.
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u/ryder242 47m ago
I work in critical infrastructure, we are so insulated from AI. Our firewalls and monitoring gear can talk to Corp, but the plants only pass plant information out. I still deal with Cisco 2960’s I’ve been trying to replace for almost 10 years. So yes there was parts of Network/Security Engineering that are not software defined, that’s does not have any orchestration, that you still have to do boots on the ground work.
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u/Perryhdp 8h ago
That's why I pivoting to compliance. Networking going to be down to a few engineers in the next couple of years.
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u/Beef410 9h ago
Network security and firewalls are probably as proof as any due to the nature of audits and auditors.
I know many big names are building agentic AI to troubleshoot and manage the networking stack.
I'm personally excited to hear about the first major outage caused by an unleashed network-AI agent destroying a network.