Computer Network Architects
Design and implement computer and information networks, such as local area networks, wide area networks, intranets, extranets, and other data communications networks.
Salary distribution (US)
Real salary data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The p10–p90 spread tells you more than the median alone.
Top skills
Knowledge you'll build
- Computers and Electronics
- Telecommunications
- Engineering and Technology
- English Language
- Design
- Mathematics
- Administration and Management
- Customer and Personal Service
A day in the life
You kick off the morning reviewing network traffic analytics and capacity-planning dashboards, looking for congestion patterns or growth trends that signal it is time to scale infrastructure. Your day involves designing topology diagrams in Visio or Lucidchart, evaluating vendor proposals for switches, routers, and firewalls, and working closely with security teams to ensure every design meets compliance requirements. You attend architecture review boards, present migration plans for moving legacy networks to SD-WAN or cloud-based solutions, and occasionally troubleshoot complex routing issues escalated by operations. The work is rewarding when a new network design goes live without a hitch, but high-stakes because a single misconfiguration can take an entire organization offline.
Is Computer Network Architects right for you?
Take the Holland test + Big-5 to see how well this career matches your profile.
Get personalised fit →