Network Engineer Salary 2026,
What Network Engineers Actually Earn

How much do network engineers make in 2026?

Network engineers map most closely to the BLS computer network architects series: OEWS May 2025 puts the SOC 15-1241 national median at $134,050 a year ($64.45 an hour), with the bottom 10% near $79,900 and the top 10% at $202,680. Read that with one important caveat — the architect series skews senior. People with the title network engineer are spread across this code and the lower-paid network and computer systems administrator code, so the P10 here is closer to a mid-level network engineer's salary than to a first job. The genuine levers are three. Scale is the first: engineers running networks measured in thousands of devices, multiple data centres or global WAN estates are paid differently from those running a single campus. Domain is the second: routing and switching alone sits in the middle of the band, while network security, data-centre fabric, service-provider MPLS and segment routing, and cloud networking across AWS, Azure and Google sit above it. Automation is the third and increasingly decisive: engineers who manage configuration through code rather than through a terminal window are the ones employers compete for. Certification helps at the hiring gate more than in the pay negotiation. Employment is projected to grow 11.9% through 2034 with roughly 11,200 openings a year. → Full network engineer career guide, career path, credentials & placement →

Note: $134,050 blends every experience level and every setting in this occupation. For pay by level alone, see Pay by Level below.

Published (BLS): BLS OEWS May 2025, SOC 15-1241, United States national estimate. Public, methodologically rigorous, but sampled on a rolling 3-year basis and published ~10 months after collection — so it reflects wages that are already 1–2 years old by the time you read them.

Level and certification medians: distributed across the published BLS percentile range for this SOC code (P10 through P90) according to the credential tiers this occupation actually hires at. They are modeled reference points, not separately surveyed wages.

State and metro figures: modeled — the BLS national median multiplied by the GlobalCybers state wage index, and for metros by the published metro index for that state. They are estimates of local pay, not BLS state or metropolitan-area observations, and are labelled as modeled in the tables below.

No verified placement sample:GlobalCybers does not yet publish a placement median for this role, so no "verified" figure appears anywhere on this page.

Full site methodology & data sources →