What a Network Engineer does in the UK, typical salary, required skills, and the realistic path in from IT support.
Network Engineers design, build and maintain the networks that connect everything, routers, switches, firewalls, and increasingly, cloud networking too. This is a genuine specialist role, and almost always built up from IT support experience rather than entered directly.
People who enjoy deep technical problem-solving and are comfortable with continuous, detailed learning about how networks actually work.
Rarely a first role, most network engineers spend real time in IT support first, building networking fundamentals along the way.
IT Support → Network Support → Network Engineer → Senior Network Engineer.