Keep the network, the servers and the Wi-Fi running so everyone else can work. Two years of college and a certification or two get you in.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$99,130
Starting out
$62,640
Senior or lead
$155,050
The national median is $99,130 a year, and the bottom tenth start near $62,640. The federal wage survey files this job as network and computer systems administrator, a line that covers people working under a dozen different job titles.
About $62,000 to $72,000
Your first real network job, usually after a help desk year or a two-year degree
Pay is lowest at small companies and school districts, highest at banks, hospitals and large tech employers. The same job in San Francisco and in rural Ohio can differ by $30,000.
$155,050 a year
What the highest paid tenth earn
The people up there run networks for big companies, or have stacked cloud and security skills on top. Staying a general network administrator forever tends to flatten your pay after about ten years.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
No degree is legally required, so the low end is somebody who studies at home with free simulator software and pays only for the Network+ exam and the Cisco networking certificate, a few hundred dollars each. That cheap door is real but harder to walk through, because without a degree you are competing on certificates alone and usually have to start on a help desk first. The high end is a four year public university degree at in state rates, roughly 11,000 to 15,000 dollars a year, plus the same exams. A two year community college degree sits in the middle at about 4,000 dollars a year and a Pell Grant can wipe most of that out.
This is one of the cheapest well paid careers in the country. Fill out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid): a Pell Grant can cover most of a community college degree, and plenty of people finish with no loans.
Employer paid certifications
Most companies cover your exam fees and training. Each certification raises what you can ask for somewhere else.
On-call pay
Networks break at 2am. Carrying the phone usually comes with extra money or time off.
Some remote work
You can fix a lot from a laptop, though somebody still has to be in the building when a cable fails.
Skills that travel
Every hospital, school, factory and law firm has a network. You are not tied to one industry or one city.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Two to four years from high school to a real network job. There is no license and no single required degree.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Take any computing class you can get. Build a home network, break it, fix it. That story gets you interviews.
Two-year degree or certificate
1 to 2 years
A community college program in networking or information technology. A four-year degree works too and opens more doors later.
First certification
2 to 4 months of study
Network+ from CompTIA, or the CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate). Either one tells an employer you know what a subnet is.
Help desk or junior technician
1 to 2 years
Almost nobody starts on the network itself. You fix laptops and reset passwords first, and you learn how the place actually works.
Network administrator
Ongoing
Switches, firewalls, servers, backups, monitoring. You own the thing everyone complains about when it is slow.
Any computer science class
Not for the programming. For getting comfortable reading an error message instead of panicking at it.
Math
Binary and subnetting are arithmetic. You will do them on a whiteboard in an interview.
English
Half the job is writing a clear message explaining why the system is down and when it will be back.
Electronics or shop
Cables, racks and connectors are physical things. Being handy is a real advantage.
The Department of Labor lists registered apprenticeships for network support technician and similar roles. You earn a wage from the first day and the employer pays for the training.
There is no state board, no exam you must pass by law, and nothing stopping anyone from calling themselves a network administrator. What employers use instead is vendor certifications. CompTIA Network+ is the common first one. Cisco runs a ladder that starts at entry level, passes through the CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate), and goes up to professional and expert grades, and Microsoft and Amazon have their own. Certifications expire, usually after three years, so this is a career of permanent studying. Cisco says almost every employer it surveyed uses technical certifications when deciding who to hire.
Community colleges
Two-year networking and information technology degrees, cheap and everywhere. Ivy Tech in Indiana runs a network infrastructure program as one example.
State universities
A four-year degree in information technology or computer information systems. Slower and dearer, but it matters for management jobs later.
Registered apprenticeships
Listed on the federal apprenticeship site. You work and get paid while you learn.
Self-taught plus certification
It genuinely works in this field, but you need a home lab and something real to show for it.
Things you don't need, but that help.
CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate)
The single most recognized networking credential in the country.
Cloud certifications
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Networks now reach into the cloud, and people who understand both sides get paid more.
Security+ or the CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional)
Security is where the money went. The CISSP needs five years of experience before you can hold it.
CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional)
The next rung up, for people who want to stay technical instead of managing.
A home lab
Old switches from a recycler plus free simulator software. It is the closest thing this field has to a portfolio.
Scripting
Python or PowerShell. Automating the boring parts is how one person covers a thousand devices.
Patience with people
You will explain the same thing to the same person four times. Getting visibly annoyed about it ends careers.
Wireshark
Free packet capture software that the federal occupation database lists as standard in this job. Learn it early.
A lot of first jobs are at firms that handle information technology for dozens of small businesses at once. The pay is usually lower and the pace is brutal, because you touch a different network every day and none of them are documented. People burn out there. They also learn more in two years than they would in five at a single employer, and they leave with a resume that reads like ten jobs. Treat it as paid training and move on when you have had enough.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
In by 8am and straight to the monitoring dashboard to see what went red overnight. Morning is tickets: a floor with no Wi-Fi, a printer nobody can reach, a new hire who needs access to everything by noon. After lunch you patch servers, test a backup restore, and carry a new switch down to a wiring closet. Some weeks nothing breaks and you spend them on projects. Then a fiber line gets cut by a digger two blocks away and you lose two days to something that was never your fault.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Federal projections have employment in this occupation flat or falling slightly through 2034, and yet about 14,300 openings a year are expected. Almost all of them come from people retiring or moving up, not from new positions being created.
The same work is advertised as network administrator, network analyst, network engineer, systems engineer, network coordinator and LAN (local area network) administrator. Search all of them or you will miss half the jobs.
That was the count for this occupation in 2024. It is a big field and a quiet one. Most people have never met the person who keeps their office online.
Wireshark, the packet capture program that shows you exactly what your network is saying to itself, costs nothing and is listed by the federal occupation database as standard equipment in this job. You could download it tonight.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.