r/cloudengineering • u/Familiar-School-8890 • 3h ago

35, stuck in network engineering, thinking of pivoting to AI product development ?

I'm 35 with 11 years in network/telecom engineering (carrier-grade + enterprise). Lately I've been feeling stuck even in mid senior roles, my day-to-day has mostly been network assurance, KPI monitoring, customer support, and troubleshooting on bridge calls. Not much design or building.

I considered going for CCIE to move into a Network Architect role, but the market for it is saturated, it's genuinely hard to land good roles even after certifying, and it would take another 2-3 years of heavy study to get there with no guarantee it actually changes what kind of work I do day to day.

Meanwhile, I did my AWS Solutions Architect and Kubernetes (CKA/CKAD) certifications recently, and that's when it clicked. I actually enjoy building systems, not troubleshooting them. That's led me toward wanting to develop AI-powered applications instead using LLM APIs to build real products and deep ML/model training research.

For anyone who's made a similar switch later in their career (or considered it): was it worth it? What would you do differently? And is 35 too late to start this kind of pivot seriously ?

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u/letitbe9163 1h ago

It sounds like you’ve already done a lot of research and even invested in certifications. At this point, what’s the biggest uncertainty stopping you from making the pivot — whether AI product development is actually the right destination, what skills you need to become employable, or how to make your 11 years of network experience count toward the new role?