Did you know network engineer is one of the most highest paid, trusted, and most in demand tech roles out there—and it’s still true right now? In this video I walk you through a real “day in the life” from the perspective of someone who’s worked as a network engineer, managed network engineers, and now interviews them. I break down what actually happens day-to-day: you wake up, you check overnight alerts (and yeah… sometimes you don’t get much sleep), and you make sure the business core network is operational because if it’s down, the business loses money and everyone gets grumpy. I also cover what you’re monitoring in the real world—switches, routers, firewalls, load balancers, proxies—and how good monitoring and alerting goes beyond “up/down” into routes, website reachability, and even switch port-level issues like speed/VLAN behavior. Then we get into security responsibilities (IDS/IPS, suspicious activity, and how networking and security can overlap depending on the company), plus the meetings/status updates leadership expects. Finally, I explain the difference between a network admin vs a network engineer (BAU vs design/architecture), why project work matters (migrations, new offices, minimizing outages), why documentation like WAN/LAN diagrams is non-negotiable, how networking sits as a Level 3 escalation role, and why staying current matters more than ever with tech moving fast—especially with AI in the mix.