Networking skills are evolving to keep pace with broader technology trends, and network pros need to proactively develop new competencies in areas such as AI and automation to stay relevant. At the same time, they need to expand their cloud and security skill sets to accommodate more complex tools and technologies.
“Networking roles are undergoing significant evolution, with a key emphasis on the integration of emerging technologies such as AI and automation,” says Joost Heins, head of intelligence at Randstad Enterprise, a global talent solutions provider. “The demand for AI skills is projected to persistently grow as these technologies become more central to network engineering and architectural roles.
From AI and network automation to cloud computing and security, the critical networking skills needed to excel in 2025 are shifting. Here’s what aspiring and current networking pros should focus on to drive demand for their skill sets.
AI skills a priority
AI is a top priority, and networking professionals need to invest in understanding AI, its capabilities, and how to utilize it.
“When it comes to AI, it has been around for a long time now. But with generative AI, interest is advancing rapidly. Professionals have to invest in themselves and invest specifically in what’s going on with AI. What are its capabilities? What are other organizations doing?” says Thomas Vick, senior regional director at global talent consulting firm Robert Half. “Generative AI put AI even more on the map. It has expedited the thought around how we utilize AI, machine learning, and automation to better ourselves and our organization.”
In the big picture, networking pros must have the skills to enable the integration of new AI applications with the underlying AI infrastructure. Within their own environments, they’re striving to learn how AI can improve operations and how to put it to work for their specific business use cases. AI has great potential to assist with networking tasks, but it needs to be “properly trained” in order for AI to effectively automate complex network troubleshooting and modeling, according to industry watchers.
“I don’t see as of yet an AI-in-the-box, ready-to-go technology that is anywhere near trained enough to help CompTIA automate the networking issues they have to troubleshoot or networking models they have to figure out. With AI, that training piece is critically important,” says Dr. James Stanger, chief technology evangelist at training and certification organization CompTIA.
Network automation builds on core experience
Research firm Gartner is bullish on network automation, forecasting that 30% of enterprises will automate more than half of their network activities by 2026, up from only 10% in mid-2023. Businesses that embrace enterprise-wide automation will deliver higher service quality while also cutting costs, Gartner predicts.
Yet network automation lags behind other automation initiatives. Data from Enterprise Management Associates showed that just 18% of surveyed IT professionals rate their network automation strategies as a complete success, while 54% noted achieving partial success, and 38% said they were uncertain of the level of success achieved or admitted failure with their network automation projects.
Among the challenges associated with network automation are staffing issues such as skills gaps and staff churn, which were cited by 27% of the respondents to EMA’s 2024 survey.
That adds up to a compelling reason for network teams to boost their programming skills to automate repetitive tasks and integrate networking into broader IT automation efforts.
By developing skills in networking monitoring, performance management, and cost optimization through automation and AI-powered tools, networking pros can become more adept at troubleshooting while offloading repetitive tasks such as copy-pasting configurations. Over time, they can gain the skills to better understand which behaviors and patterns to automate.
According to Skillsoft’s Stanger, networking professionals can be challenged in finding the appropriate tasks and workflows to automate. They must still understand core networking concepts, device interactions, and performance metrics to effectively leverage and manage automated systems.
“A lot of times networking professionals struggle to figure out what to automate because you have to find a pattern of something to automate first. If we have better modeling and architecting at the beginning, it creates a more rational environment in which you see some repetition and some common elements that you can then build an automated architecture or infrastructure,” Stanger says.
Cloud specialties include AWS, GCP
Cloud networking skills, such as understanding cloud networking concepts, cloud security, and cloud-based network observability tools, will also advance a networking career. A deep understanding of cloud platforms and services is essential, and this includes knowledge of cloud architecture, deployment models, and management tools. Specialized skills in areas like AWS networking, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) networking, network observability, and site reliability engineering (SRE) practices will also give network pros a career edge in the coming years.
“The continuous growth in cloud technologies ensures that cloud computing skills remain in high demand. This includes a thorough understanding of cloud infrastructure and services, which is becoming crucial,” Randstad’s Heins says. “Particularly challenging for companies to find are skills related to cloud service management, especially when combined with AI competencies.”
Designing the appropriate network infrastructure, especially for cloud-first and hybrid environments, will be critical for networking pros looking to support sophisticated cloud environments. According to Greg Fuller, chief evangelist and vice president of Skillsoft/Codecademy, cloud computing, in some cases, can lead to complacency in networking as it allows more flexibility to spin up networks quickly. This can also introduce security risks that networking pros need to be aware of and manage, so foundational networking skills remain critical even as the cloud simplifies some networking tasks.
“If you think about networking as a whole, those foundational elements, such as understanding how devices interact with each other and understanding the difference between one hop versus 50 hops in terms of performance, are essential with cloud, but we will find more and more specialized skills such as AWS networking specialist and GCP networking specialist,” Skillsoft’s Fuller says. Networking pros should also learn more about observability as Fuller notes it is one of the “hotter trending topics” in cloud networking.
SASE, ZTNA shape security skills
As networking and security technologies converge, advanced security skills are critical to address cybersecurity challenges within network infrastructures and organizations are requiring networking professionals to have a deeper understanding of security concepts and be able to take on security-focused roles.
“There are organizations that are encouraging people to get more understanding and more experience within security, but they are also upskilling their staff to help them get more experience because there is such a shortage in security professionals, especially at the security engineer level,” Robert Half’s Vick says.
Networking and security technologies are converging in areas such as SASE, and it is no longer possible to keep the two IT domains separate in terms of skills. Zero trust network architecture (ZTNA) can be credited with bringing networking and security together, according to CompTIA’s Stanger, because it eliminates the concept of a trusted network perimeter and, instead, requires continuous verification of every user, device, and application attempting to access resources regardless of their location on the network—which integrates network access controls with security measures. Skills in implementing zero-trust architectures and collaborating with security teams are in high demand.
“One way of understanding what zero trust means is seeing that networking, that the very active transport, is not independent of cybersecurity,” Stanger says. Under zero trust principles, networking and security are integrated domains in which networking professionals need to understand the security implications of their work and vice versa for security professionals.
The job market for networking professionals remains very tight with low unemployment rates, and organizations are taking multi-pronged approaches to address skills gaps, including finding external resources, developing internal talent, and investing in upskilling.
For networking pros, the key is to develop a well-rounded set of skills that span AI, automation, cloud computing, network architecture, and security to be successful in the evolving networking landscape. By focusing on these areas, networking professionals can position themselves to meet the evolving demands of the industry in 2025 and beyond.
Source:: Network World