C/C++ systems engineers on Linux. A switch, a router or a 5G packet core is a Linux machine whose real job is moving packets. Writing the software that makes it do that is the core of this industry. These engineers build the network operating system, the routing and switching protocols, the path each packet takes through the box, and the drivers and board support that bring a new piece of hardware to life. It is much the largest role in networking and telecom equipment, and one of the few places among product companies where the C/C++ systems engineer is the most common opening of all.

Embedded firmware engineers. One layer below the systems engineer sits the firmware engineer. The systems engineer writes the operating system and networking software that run on the box. The firmware engineer writes what runs underneath and before it, which is the boot code that starts the box and the drivers that make the network chips, radios and Wi-Fi hardware work. The same kind of code sits in radio units, home gateways and Wi-Fi access points. This is the second signature role of the Industry Vertical.

Test engineers, of a different kind. Networking companies hire testers in about the same proportion as other product companies, but the testing looks very different. Much of it is embedded and hardware testing, with protocol, interoperability, performance and scale tests run on real equipment in a lab and automated in Python. Browser tools such as Selenium matter little here.

Cloud and DevOps engineers. The network is moving off sealed boxes and onto ordinary servers running Kubernetes. So the cloud engineer in this industry often runs network functions as cloud-native software rather than looking after a company's own systems. The share of cloud hiring is close to that of other product companies, but the postings require Go and Python as often as the usual cloud tools such as AWS, Azure, Docker and Jenkins.

Java engineers, in one corner. Java is light across the Industry Vertical. Almost all of it sits in The operator's software, a sub-segment of Market Segment 1.1, which covers billing, charging, roaming, subscriber management and the platforms that digital operators build for themselves. These are large legacy Java systems, many in service for over a decade, and much of the work is modernising them.

Go backend engineers. Functions that used to be built into hardware boxes, such as routing control, firewalls and network management, now run as ordinary software services in the cloud. The newer networking companies write those services and their APIs in Go. It is a small group, but a distinctive one.

GenAI engineers. This is the fastest-growing role here. These engineers build AI into network management tools, such as assistants that explain a fault in plain language and agents that diagnose and fix a network on their own. The postings require Python, LangChain and LangGraph, LLM APIs and Kubernetes. Between April and June 2026, AI work was rarer in this Industry Vertical than at other product companies. Between July and September 2026 its share of hiring more than doubled, reaching about the same level as the rest of the product industry. Most of the growth came from Cisco, the market leader in enterprise networking, in Market Segment 1.2.

Chip designers (VLSI and FPGA). They are few in number, yet this Industry Vertical hires them far more often than other product companies do, and the role is central to what it builds. Network equipment needs chips that process packets at full line speed, and chips that can be reprogrammed when standards change after the equipment has shipped. The work is FPGA and ASIC design and verification, written in Verilog and VHDL with EDA tools. Two things set the role apart here.

This work sits at three kinds of company. They are the programmable-chip maker Lattice Semiconductor in Market Segment 1.6, the data-centre switch maker Arista Networks and Cisco in Market Segment 1.2, and the fixed-wireless equipment maker Tarana Wireless in Market Segment 1.1. It is hired almost entirely with experience.

Software Engineer, Security. These are software engineers who specialise in security, building login systems, cloud and network protections, and the checks that keep code safe. In networking they work mostly on the security built into the products themselves, such as VPN and IPSec, firewalls on the box and secure boot. Their share of hiring is close to that at other product companies.

Rare here. Frontend, data engineering, .NET, mobile, SAP, Salesforce and ServiceNow all appear, because a networking company needs some of each for its back office and its management consoles. None of them describes what this Industry Vertical builds.