The Network Engineer Shortage Is Getting Worse: How IT Leaders Can Keep Networks Running
Half of IT organizations now say they struggle to hire network talent. The network engineer shortage has been building for years, and new research shows it is accelerating. At the same time, networks are carrying more AI traffic and spanning more clouds than ever. This post looks at the latest data and offers practical steps for leaders who need to keep things running with the people they have.
What the Latest Data Shows
Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) surveyed 352 IT professionals in North America and Europe for its Network Management Megatrends 2026 report. In 2022, 26% of organizations said hiring network experts was difficult. By 2024 that number reached 41%. Today it sits at 52%.
The strain shows up in results. Only 31% of respondents called their network operations strategy completely successful. Two years earlier, 42% said the same. Network professionals spend about 29% of their day troubleshooting. Manual administrative errors cause 28% of network problems.
Workloads are also changing. EMA found that 47.7% of organizations already run AI training or inference workloads on their networks. Only 35% said their observability tools are fully ready for that traffic. In addition, 69% run hybrid cloud environments, but just 36% feel completely effective at managing cloud networks.
Why the Network Engineer Shortage Keeps Growing
Several forces are pushing in the same direction. Experienced engineers are retiring. A 2023 Opengear survey found that 86% of CIOs expected a quarter of their network engineers to retire within five years. Those engineers often hold years of undocumented knowledge about how a network was built.
The skills mix is shifting too. EMA’s Shamus McGillicuddy points to network security and networking for AI applications as especially hard to find. Network automation is another gap. Classic routing and switching knowledge still matters. But employers now also expect Python scripting and comfort with cloud networking.
There is also a pipeline problem. In a separate EMA survey of 152 IT and security decision makers, 72% were at least somewhat concerned about AI replacing entry-level roles. Their worry is simple. If junior jobs disappear, where will the next generation of senior engineers come from?
Practical Steps for IT and Network Leaders
You cannot hire your way out of this gap quickly. You can reduce the load on your current team and make every hire count. Here are steps that hold up in real environments.
Automate the day-two work first
EMA found that 79% of organizations rate day-two automation as a high priority. Start with tasks that are frequent and well understood. Configuration backups and compliance checks are good candidates. So are change validation and rollback. Every hour saved on routine work is an hour your senior people can spend on design.
Fix alert noise before buying more tools
EMA reports that only 37% of monitoring alerts point to a real problem. Most teams already use four to ten monitoring tools. EMA found no link between the size of the toolset and operational success. Integrating the tools you have and tuning thresholds will often do more than adding another dashboard.
Capture knowledge before it walks out the door
Pair retiring engineers with newer staff on real projects. Ask them to document design decisions, not just device configs. Keep network diagrams and runbooks in a shared source of truth that stays current. A good source of truth also makes automation safer.
Grow your own talent
Nearly 60% of organizations in EMA’s research are upskilling existing staff for advanced roles. Look for systems administrators or help desk staff with strong troubleshooting instincts. Fund certifications and give them supervised time on production changes. Keep at least a few entry-level seats open, even if AI tools could cover some of the work today.
Write job descriptions that match the real need
Many postings ask for every skill at once. That shrinks the candidate pool for no good reason. Decide which skills are required on day one and which can be learned. A strong routing engineer can learn your automation stack. A strong automation engineer can learn your topology. Pick the gap that hurts most and hire for that.
Use flexible staffing for peaks
Large projects like a data center refresh or a cloud migration create short bursts of demand. Contract or contract-to-hire engineers can cover those peaks. This protects your core team from burnout. It also lets you evaluate people before making a permanent offer.
Preparing for AI Traffic on the Network
AI workloads change how networks behave. Training jobs create heavy east-west traffic and are sensitive to latency and packet loss. EMA respondents said they want proactive alerts for AI performance risks and better correlation between GPU and network metrics. If your company plans to scale AI projects, bring the network team into planning early. As McGillicuddy put it, “Networks will make or break those projects.”
Conclusion
The network engineer shortage is not a short-term blip. The data points to harder hiring each year while workloads keep growing. Leaders who automate routine work and invest in their current staff will be in the best position. Clear hiring priorities matter just as much. If you need help finding network engineers or infrastructure specialists, Converge Resources works with companies on exactly this. Learn more at www.ConvergeResources.com.
