Privacy-friendly analytics help us see which jobs people explore. They stay off unless you agree.Analytics off unless you agree. Details

Read the record
Back to the river
Skip to sources
Time Machine

Computer network architects

Also called Network architect, Sr network architect, Senior network architect, Principal network architect, Network designer

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 179,740 US computer network architects, with median pay of $134,050 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 45,000 from 1995, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for computer network architects: Cloud networking + SD-WAN, 2015 to 2022. SD-WAN adoption reduced the footprint of branch-office network equipment and cut router-configuration labor for entry-level engineers.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 7.7% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Computer network architects: jobs and pay since 1995 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1241

Chicago

Future History. "Computer network architects: jobs and pay since 1995." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1241.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_15_1241, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Computer network architects: jobs and pay since 1995}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1241}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
19752000now
2026
Known then as Network Designer / IMP Engineer (ARPANET research era)
Known then as Network Engineer / Telecommunications Engineer (TCP/IP enterprise era)
Known then as Network Engineer / LAN-WAN Engineer / Senior Network Engineer (Cisco certification era)
Known then as Network Architect / Senior Network Architect / Network Infrastructure Architect
Known then as Computer Network Architects (BLS SOC 15-1241, 2010 SOC revision)
Known today as Computer Network Architects (BLS SOC 15-1241, 2010 SOC revision)
Projected to still be called Computer Network Architects (BLS SOC 15-1241, 2010 SOC revision)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
180K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$134,050
Est.

≈ $130,613 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1969

October 29: the first two characters ("lo") were transmitted over the ARPANET between UCLA and SRI in the world's first packet-switched wide-area network message. The network designers who built the ARPANET's Interface Message Processors at Bolt Beranek and Newman are the direct professional ancestors of the modern network architect.

Beat · 1974

May 1974: Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn published "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication" in IEEE Transactions on Communications, describing the Transmission Control Protocol. This paper is the architectural foundation of every computer network designed since.

Beat · 1983

January 1, 1983: "Flag Day" -- all machines on the ARPANET were required to switch from NCP to TCP/IP simultaneously. This mandatory cutover is considered the birth of the modern internet and transformed network architecture from a bespoke research craft into a reproducible discipline.

Beat · 1993

July 19, 1993: Stuart Biggs received CCIE number 1024 -- the first Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert. Cisco chose 1024 as the starting number (2 to the power of 10) as a nod to binary convention. The CCIE was the profession's first formal credential, and CCIE holders immediately commanded significant salary premiums. By 2023 -- the certification's 30th anniversary -- over 70,000 CCIEs had been certified worldwide.

Beat · 2000

March 2000: Cisco Systems briefly surpassed a $500 billion market capitalization, making it the most valuable company in the world for a moment during the dot-com peak. Cisco's rise reflected the scale of enterprise demand for network equipment and the engineers who designed networks around it. The bust that followed in 2001-2003 caused significant layoffs in network engineering as WorldCom, Lucent, Nortel, and hundreds of startups collapsed.

Beat · 2010

The 2010 SOC revision introduced the separate BLS occupation code 15-1241 for Computer Network Architects, distinguishing them from Network and Computer Systems Administrators (15-1244) for the first time in the official occupational classification. Before this revision, architects and administrators were bundled under a single category, making historical employment trend comparisons imprecise.

Beat · 2025

By 2025 the profession had bifurcated sharply along an AI axis: entry-level network configuration roles were contracting as AIOps platforms automated monitoring, anomaly detection, and routine troubleshooting; senior architecture roles designing AI-workload fabrics, zero-trust segmentation, and multi-cloud interconnects were growing and commanding premium salaries. TechTarget reported in 2026 that specialization in AI-ready network design could lift a generalist architect's salary from $80,000 to $140,000 or more.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace computer network architects? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+7.7%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 15-1241 (Computer network architects): 181.8 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 195.8 thousand in 2035, a change of +14.1 thousand (+7.7%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (0.4% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
55.5%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 15-1241.00 Computer Network Architects. Shown: human-rated β = 0.555, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.203 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.906; GPT-4-rated β 0.664. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for computer network architects

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you herePrepare detailed network design documentation, architecture diagrams, RFPs, and technical specifications: using generative AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude) to draft initial design documents, configuration guides, and vendor evaluation matrices, then reviewing and refining for accuracy, completeness, and organizational context.

Prepare detailed network design documentation, architecture diagrams, RFPs, and technical specifications: using generative AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude) to draft initial design documents, configuration guides, and vendor evaluation matrices, then reviewing and refining for accuracy, completeness, and organizational context.[6],[4],[1]

Where your edge is

Build documentation skills that AI cannot replicate: AI drafts generic templates accurately, but the architecture decisions that differentiate your design (why you chose BGP over OSPF at this scale, why you placed the firewall cluster at this boundary, what the vendor negotiation history was) require human judgment and organizational memory that must be embedded into the living design record.

AI is sitting alongside you herePerform network capacity planning and traffic analysis: using Kentik AI Advisor to autonomously investigate utilization trends, forecast run-out scenarios, and generate bandwidth upgrade recommendations backed by telemetry from a trillion data points per day, then translating AI findings into capital expenditure proposals for executive approval.

Perform network capacity planning and traffic analysis: using Kentik AI Advisor to autonomously investigate utilization trends, forecast run-out scenarios, and generate bandwidth upgrade recommendations backed by telemetry from a trillion data points per day, then translating AI findings into capital expenditure proposals for executive approval.[7],[13],[1]

Where your edge is

Develop skills in translating AI-generated traffic forecasts into business cases: Kentik AI Advisor can identify a capacity cliff weeks out and recommend an upgrade, but deciding whether to invest in more bandwidth, reroute traffic, rearchitect the topology, or negotiate a new ISP contract is a cost-benefit judgment requiring organizational and financial context the AI does not have.

Get started with these tools
AI is sitting alongside you hereArchitect multi-cloud network connectivity, designing transit VPC/VNet topologies, cloud on-ramp strategies, and cross-cloud routing using Aviatrix CoPilot for unified visibility and control, then validating connectivity policies and routing paths before cutover of production workloads.

Architect multi-cloud network connectivity, designing transit VPC/VNet topologies, cloud on-ramp strategies, and cross-cloud routing using Aviatrix CoPilot for unified visibility and control, then validating connectivity policies and routing paths before cutover of production workloads.[10],[14],[2]

Where your edge is

Develop multi-cloud network architecture depth: cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) each have distinct networking primitives (VPC Lattice, Azure Virtual WAN, GCP Cross-Cloud Interconnect) that must be composed carefully. AI copilots surface topology anomalies but the architectural choice of routing hierarchy, failure domain design, and cloud egress cost optimization requires human judgment with financial accountability.

Get started with these tools

Where computer network architects go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

Senior network architects who accumulate budget authority, vendor relationship management, and the ability to communicate infrastructure risk to non-technical executives are well-positioned for IT management. Network architects moving into this role bring rare architectural depth: they can evaluate vendor proposals that other IT managers cannot assess technically, and they understand the long-horizon consequences of infrastructure decisions.

What you'd add
  • · IT governance frameworks: ITIL v4, COBIT, and enterprise architecture frameworks (TOGAF, SABSA)
  • · Budget management: CapEx/OpEx planning, cloud cost governance (FinOps), and vendor contract negotiation
  • · Executive communication: translating network architecture risk into business-impact language for C-suite audiences
  • · Team leadership: hiring, performance management, and building hybrid network/cloud engineering teams
  • · Strategic planning: multi-year technology roadmaps that align network infrastructure investment with business objectives
What it takesA real upskill, but a natural one
Tools of the era

How has the work of computer network architects changed since 1969?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Interface Message Processors + NCP (ARPANET research era)

    The first network designers worked with Interface Message Processors (IMPs) -- specialized minicomputers built by Bolt Beranek and Newman that connected host machines to the ARPANET. Their design tools were mathematical: packet-switching theory (Leonard Kleinrock's 1961 PhD thesis at MIT predated the ARPANET), circuit diagrams, and direct programming of Honeywell 516 and DDP-516 minicomputers. The Network Control Protocol (NCP) was the first host-to-host protocol, running from 1970 until the mandatory switch to TCP/IP in January 1983. For the small cohort of ARPANET designers, "designing a network" meant specifying which universities would get IMPs, how many lines would connect them, and what routing algorithms the IMPs would run. There was no design software: everything was worked out mathematically or simulated by hand.

  • TCP/IP + early routers (Cisco founding era)

    TCP/IP's mandatory adoption on January 1, 1983, was a design watershed: for the first time, any organization connecting to the ARPANET (and soon, the internet) had to implement the same protocol stack. This transformed network design from a bespoke craft at each site into something reproducible. Cisco Systems, founded in December 1984 by Stanford computer scientists Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner, shipped their first multi-protocol router in 1986. Their device could speak the many incompatible LAN protocols of the era (SNA, DECnet, AppleTalk, Novell IPX) and route between them -- exactly what enterprise network designers had been building custom solutions to do. By the early 1990s, network engineers were specifying Cisco routers and configuring them via IOS command-line -- a skill that became the core competency of the emerging profession. Competing platforms (3Com, Bay Networks, Wellfleet) also existed, but Cisco's IOS syntax became the professional lingua franca.

    Effect on the work

    The Cisco router standardized the implementation toolkit for network engineers, enabling the profession to scale: designers no longer needed to understand proprietary hardware internals for each vendor. This commoditized the entry tier while creating strong premiums for those who understood TCP/IP routing deeply.

  • Cisco CCIE / CCNA certification era + enterprise LAN-WAN boom

    The Cisco CCIE certification, launched July 19, 1993 (the first recipient was Stuart Biggs, holder number 1024), was the profession's first formal credential -- and it was immediately prestigious. Cisco followed with CCNP and CCNA in 1998, announced at Cisco Networkers in Philadelphia, creating a tiered certification ladder that structured the network architect career path for two decades. The CCIE transformed network architecture from an informal apprenticeship into a credentialed profession: it provided a signal of expertise that hiring managers could use, enabling the rapid scaling of network teams that the dot-com boom required. The 1990s internet and intranet boom -- Cisco revenue grew through 1990 in FY1999 -- demanded tens of thousands of network designers, and certification became the credential that distinguished architects from administrators.

    Effect on the work

    Cisco certification created a dual-tier labor market: CCIE and CCNP holders who could design complex topologies, and CCNA holders and uncertified technicians who configured and maintained them. This structural differentiation between architect and administrator persisted as the defining career-path split in networking.

  • Virtualization + SDN design tools (VMware, early OpenFlow)

    Server virtualization, led by VMware (ESX Server launched 2001; vSphere 2009), collapsed the traditional one-server-one-function model and forced network architects to think about virtual switch overlays for the first time. A single physical host now ran dozens of virtual machines, each requiring network connectivity, security policy, and traffic inspection -- a complexity multiplier that the physical network alone could not absorb. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) emerged as a research concept around 2008 with the OpenFlow protocol from Stanford and Berkeley, promising to separate the network's control plane (routing decisions) from the data plane (packet forwarding). For network architects, SDN was intellectually transformative even before it was practically widespread: the idea that a network could be programmed centrally through an API rather than configured device-by-device on the CLI was the conceptual foundation for every cloud networking model that followed.

  • Cloud networking + SD-WAN (AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, Cisco Meraki)

    The shift of enterprise workloads to AWS, Azure, and GCP redrew the map of what a network architect designed. The corporate data center was no longer the hub; it was one node among many. Cloud-native networking primitives (AWS VPC, Azure Virtual Network, GCP VPC) required architects to learn vendor-specific constructs that did not map cleanly onto traditional routing and switching knowledge. SD-WAN -- software-defined wide area networking -- replaced expensive MPLS circuits with broadband internet paths managed by overlay software, and vendors like Cisco Meraki, Viptela (acquired by Cisco 2017), VeloCloud (acquired by VMware 2017), and Silver Peak (acquired by Aruba/HPE 2020) competed for enterprise contracts. Network architects who had built careers around physical router configuration had to learn cloud-native constructs, programmability (Python, Ansible, Terraform), and multi-vendor overlay architectures. This was the most disruptive skill shift the profession had seen since the TCP/IP transition of 1983.

    Effect on the work

    SD-WAN adoption reduced the footprint of branch-office network equipment and cut router-configuration labor for entry-level engineers. Simultaneously, the complexity of multi-cloud network design and zero-trust architecture increased demand for senior architects who could reason across AWS, Azure, and GCP simultaneously. The profession bifurcated: commodity configuration roles contracted; architecture and design roles grew.

  • AI-native network management + agentic AIOps (Juniper Mist, Forward Networks, Kentik AI)

    The 2022-2026 period brought two simultaneous forces to the network architecture profession: AI tools that automate the operational loop of network management, and AI workload infrastructure that creates entirely new design requirements. On the operations side, platforms like Juniper Mist AI's Marvis (reporting up to 90% fewer trouble tickets and 85% OpEx reduction in August 2025 agentic updates), Forward Networks Forward AI (a mathematical digital twin that verifies intent vs. implementation across thousands of devices with mathematical certainty, GA April 2026), and Kentik AI Advisor (agentic capacity planning and traffic analysis, launched November 2025) are automating the monitoring and troubleshooting loop that junior engineers previously handled. On the design side, the AI infrastructure buildout -- hyperscaler GPU clusters, enterprise AI workload fabrics, RoCE/InfiniBand lossless networking for GPU-to-GPU traffic -- is creating a new design discipline that did not exist before 2022. BLS explicitly cites AI infrastructure investment as a primary driver of its +12% growth projection for 2024-2034, the strongest outlook for any broadly tracked IT infrastructure occupation. The architect who can design a 400G spine-leaf fabric for a GPU training cluster, and who knows when to delegate routine verification to an AI agent, is the archetype of the role in 2026.

    Effect on the work

    AI-native AIOps tools are absorbing the monitoring, alerting, and routine troubleshooting tasks that accounted for a large share of junior network engineer time. TechTarget 2026 confirms the resulting bifurcation: entry-level configuration roles are shrinking; senior architecture roles requiring AI-workload fabric design and SASE/zero-trust expertise are growing and commanding salaries up to $140,000 or more.

Part of Tech & Data · see all 28 roles →
Different role?

See the same long-arc view for your own profession.

Browse the directory by industry, or search by title or SOC code.

Browse all roles

Computer Network Architects employment and pay by year

On record since1969
Latest US employment179,740 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$134,050 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+7.7% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error
View all 10 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
199545,000$58,000Est., Cisco Systems history (employment) Researched contextEst., CBT Nuggets (pay) Researched contextReport
2000120,000$75,000Est., IPUMS USA (employment) Researched contextEst., St. Louis Fed (pay) Researched contextReport
200385,000n/aEst., BLS OOH 2004-05 edition Researched contextReport
2019152,420$112,690BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
2020159,350$116,780BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
2021168,830$120,520BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
2022173,920$126,900BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
2023174,100$129,840BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
2024177,010$130,390BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
2025179,740$134,050BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
Embed this timeline on your site

Free for any site. Paste this where the timeline should appear; it stays interactive, every datapoint stays cited, and it sets no cookies on your page. How embedding works

<iframe src="https://futurehistory.earth/embed/15-1241"
  width="100%" height="430" style="border:0"
  title="Computer Network Architects, a Future History timeline"
  loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="font-size:13px;margin:4px 0 0"><a href="https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1241">Computer Network Architects: jobs and pay over time</a>, from Future History</p>

See all roles in Tech & Data