Network Engineering & Telecommunications

The network engineering and telecommunications landscape is evolving, so hiring managers are looking for candidates who can work across both traditional networking and the software-defined and cloud-native approaches that are pushing this evolution. Roles remain in demand, both in enterprise IT, managed service providers, telecoms operators as well as within cloud and hyperscale environments.

Core network engineering roles focus on the design, implementation, and management of LAN, WAN, and wireless infrastructure. Candidates need to be proficient with routing and switching, and familiarity with BGP, OSPF and MPLS is a baseline expectation for most mid-to-senior positions. Candidates also need experience with vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, Aruba or Palo Alto. Network security is increasingly included in the network engineering remit, rather than existing as a separate responsibility, so it’s important to have knowledge of firewalls, VPNs, NAC and zero trust network access.

Roles in telecoms are wide and varied, from RF and infrastructure engineers who work on mobile network deployments, to roles focused on unified communications, VoIP platforms and collaboration tools. Hiring is growing for those candidates experienced in 5G architecture, private networks and integrating telecoms infrastructure into enterprise IT environments.

The boundary between traditional networking and cloud infrastructure is only becoming more and more blurred, so software-defined networking, network automation and experience with cloud networking across AWS, Azure or GCP are increasingly valued skills.