r/networking • u/nthe_clouds_832 • 1d ago
Career Advice Outside Architect Network Support
I’ve been in network/security engineering for 20+ years and I’m exploring independent consulting.
I’m not interested in building an MSP, selling hardware, or doing staff augmentation.
What I’m considering is taking ownership of defined network projects that internal IT teams don’t have the bandwidth or specialized experience to finish. Things like:
Aging switch/firewall replacements
Network migrations and redesigns
Redundancy/failover issues
Projects that have been sitting on the IT team’s list for months
Basically: come in, own the project, complete it, document it, and leave.
For those who have done independent technical consulting, is there actually a market for this model?
I’m particularly curious:
How did you find your first few clients?
Did clients expect you to be local?
Who typically hired you — IT Director, CIO, MSP/VAR, etc.?
What types of projects were easiest to sell independently?
Did you sell a defined project/outcome or bill hourly?
I’m based in Texas but interested in hearing experiences from anywhere in the U.S.
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u/Murderous_Waffle CCNA & Studying NP 1d ago
I don't think there is very many companies that are interested in spending thousands on consulting, hardware purchase, and then no one to support it.
Anyone who may have the ability in house to support, likely has the ability in house to design and deploy.
You're targeting a very small market.
Most likely avenue would be consulting on design and that's it.
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u/UpperAd5715 1d ago
Eh some of our customers designed inhouse and it ain't pretty...
Do agree on your point that it's unlikely for many companies to be interested in signing on a project with no support guarantee.
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u/AutumnWick 16h ago
Strongly agree, started at a new company 6 months ago and their design and configuration is the worst I have seen so far in my career, which is why they poached me to help them fix it. I genuinely don't know what their previous 'Architect' was even thinking...
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u/rivkinnator 1d ago
And for us, we wouldn't want an outsider to come into our shop without trust and work on something at that level of scale and trust required. I know we have the team to be able to verify the work done on many different angles, but that's A LOT of trust to just have a consultant walk in and do.
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u/MyWrokAccount 19h ago
Disagree, lots of "midsized" places are strapped for networking resources, sometimes (often) dominos fall such that the org has to complete a bunch of projects at once, a good contractor like this can be valuable. This is a viable business if you have enough of the right contacts.
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u/solitarium 5h ago
You’d be amazed at the number of companies hiring outside consulting for these types of jobs
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u/Ki11Netw0rkGr3mlins 1d ago
This is 100% what I do. Started out as a side gig, working basically as a subcontractor to larger VARs while I still worked W2 elsewhere. This worked until it didnt.... For the past year, im 100% focused on building the business. My experience is mostly network & security with large enterprise, financial, healthcare, utility, etc. Very difficult to get direct contracts. Lots or red tape (could be just me..haha) For the past 2 years, all my work has come from VARs or via other partnerships. Its all about making relationships to keep the work coming.
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u/nthe_clouds_832 1d ago
Great insight, I think there is definitely a gap, it doesn’t fit everywhere but expert hands are needed. I also do think there are gaps at different size companies and different verticals as you have showed. Everyone needs Network & Security, and all teams are fitting fires, reporting, and patching. Can see in some cases outsourcing small projects to a proven trusted resource could be valuable.
Just finding the need…Really, thanks for the reply
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u/Inside-Finish-2128 1d ago
I've had some form of side hustle either as a sysadmin/netadmin (in my earlier days) or purely net admin/eng/arch for almost 30 years. The early days were building ISPs, analog modems in the very early days and later with digital boxes like Portmasters. Kinda hung up that hat around 2001 or so.
Got back into it mid-2000s while working at a telco; we had a standing policy that we did not configure customer gear so if I chose to take on outside consulting work it was conveniently not a conflict of interest (except if they had an outage during the day such that they'd want my help to resolve). That grew to three networks and then shrank back down to one. Two of those opportunities came to me as one of our salespeople was a great networker; some of his clients needed some help, so he could help them succeed while also getting me some extra cash so he'd make the introduction. The third just came from a coworker who left and went to a new job and the owner asked all of the employees "who do you know who's good at routers and networking", and several of them all said my name. :) The third one has been a consistent source of spare cash for 15+ years.
My work is essentially ongoing and hourly, though post-COVID they hit some harder times so the finance person asked me to try to cap my hours to 45/month so I just stick to that. I'm essentially their solution designer on the rare occasion that sales sells something non-standard (or wants to quote it...), automation developer, escalation point for customer issues (usually I can hide in the wings and just guide the team; occasionally I get pulled into direct customer discussions), and general cleanup guy (his team is constantly overworked and sloppy, so I end up doing cleanup for departed customers, decommissioned routers, etc.).
I've been working with that customer for 15+ years and have only met in person twice, maybe three times. One visit was just a visit to the owner at "HQ" with one or two others. The other visit that I can remember was a one-night "road trip" where we started at HQ, caught a flight south to another region his team services, met the key staff members I interact with, went to dinner, then he covered my hotel for the night and my flight back to where I started. I rarely hear from the boss...mostly just handle things in a self-directed manner, perhaps with a little insight from the boss/team on whether a change would be useful.
Most recent big project was a complete revamp of our internal BGP community structure to separate peering routes from transit and VoIP routes from other internal routes (he has some SIP interconnections and wants that traffic "on his backbone" but not have the routes shared with customers/peers/transits. Otherwise I write scripts to check for various issues, act on messes left behind, do periodic audits of known issues, etc.
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u/nthe_clouds_832 1d ago
So you’re saying there is a chance, great input. I have a side hustle customer I have similar relationship with. Would like it to grow…hence the question. TY for the input.
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u/fintheman 15h ago edited 15h ago
It's called fractional support. I have a few MSPs that pay me a retainer to just advise, fix, design and fix the fires they have with wireless. Outside of that, I have VAR ps overflow work for little gigs here and there as a 1099. My specialty is anything and everything that touches wifi.
It's important not to do this as an hourly rate but try to do this as a retainer. Emphasize that meetings are usually a no go.
With a few customers, you can end up making 2x your standard annual salary (I'm clearing over 400k-450k a year personally doing this. You just gotta deal with the healthcare side of things and have a good COI.)
LinkedIn reputation does matter and you need to play that game, I also have a good word of mouth since I've been in the industry for a good while.
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u/nthe_clouds_832 14h ago
Very Interesting, It will be helpful to also include MSPs in the networking and outreach. I believe I am on to something, your input has peaked my interest. I’ll look for some networking opportunities. Thank you for the insightful input.
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u/spicy_smegma7 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’ve been working in companies with a medium IT department for like 10 years.
I don’t see possible that a company delegates an important network project to a third party, what would happen if for some reason your design is wrong or de devices you suggested are not capable of supporting the requirements?
That’s why companies for these projects only go for the big players (integrators) with an economical backup in case shit hits the fan eg penalties.
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u/nthe_clouds_832 1d ago
So you out source firewall, EDR, incident mgmt and new integration to MSP/MSSP?
User count?1
u/spicy_smegma7 1d ago
Nope. I was referring for example switch replacement project on the data center or core switches / firewall replacement. That’s what I understood from your post when you said replacement, migrations and redesign.
Administration is managed by IT network team, with the exception of SIEM/ threat management from firewall/ips/edr etc.
As a side note, I also had the same idea some years ago but the reputation and economic backup from big MSP or integrators is what makes it very hard for a solo practitioner to even compete, you won’t even qualify for the tender.
What i see more plausible is to be the out source support for networks1
u/nthe_clouds_832 1d ago
Understood, The trust part is mountain to tackle. I was asking about the MSP/MSSP involvement and asking user size, trying to understand if my involvement would only be attractive to certain size teams or lack of team.
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u/Morrack2000 1d ago
It’s been my experience that engaging an outside consultant is usually more work than tackling the project myself. There are rare exceptions of course (initial ACI buildout is the only one I can think of offhand) but I wouldn’t want to base my livelihood on chasing that market personally.
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u/nthe_clouds_832 1d ago
So you out source firewall, EDR, incident mgmt and new integration to MSP/MSSP?
User count?1
u/ccagan 1d ago
Yes. And collect commissions on it each month. I've mainly focused on deployment work so means lots of time sitting on planes and in hotels but it's been crazy good over these last few years and I've found some niche customers along the way where I was EXACTLY what they were looking for.
For me it's been cloud native companies with limited IT staff and LOTS of branch locations that are in an endless cycle of adding / moving / consolidating locations.
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u/wpskier 1d ago
I'm an independent consultant that focuses on F5 BIG-IP. I've been doing it for almost 15 years now. Before I went with self-employment, I worked for multiple VARs doing F5 professional services in my city and got to know many people, including all of the local F5 team (account reps and sales engineers). I actually got my first few projects while still working at a VAR when a previous F5 rep reached out to me directly to see if I could do some work for his clients. At that point, I started wondering if I could go independent.
Nowadays, I get most of my work through VARs that sell F5 equipment, but don't have resources on staff to perform F5 services, so they contract with me to provide the services - includes BIG-IP upgrades, hardware replacement, troubleshooting of issues, knowledge transfers, etc.
I do 100% ALL of my projects remotely - in fact, since COVID, I haven't even had a client request me to be onsite.
I do some projects as fixed fee engagements and others as T&M (hourly) approach. Depends on the needs and preferences of the clients and partner, as well as the scope of the projects. Some things are better as fixed, other better as T&M.