The evolving role of network engineers in the age of AI

Integrated AI networking-security makes engineers proactive

by · TechRadar

Opinion By Laura Lehman Published 27 July 2026

(Image credit: Getty Images)

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As the worlds of networking and security increasingly collide, the role of network engineers is also evolving. IT teams are now on the frontlines of an organization's cybersecurity, monitoring what’s happening across traffic, users, devices to spot issues and threats early, and act before they escalate.

Laura Lehman

Director of Digital Experience Product Management at GTT.

When network and security architectures are integrated well, complexity decreases while performance increases, security gets stronger and latency lowers; and overall, day-to-day operations become simpler.

With better visibility and AI-driven automation, organizations can spot and contain threats even faster, improve oversight across users, devices and applications, and build a more agile platform for digital transformation, including cloud adoption, branch modernization and hybrid working.

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Perhaps the most significant evolution is that the old “detect, diagnose, fix” workstream for a network engineer is being replaced with a more proactive model. Aided by AI, networks can now learn from past behavior, flag early warning signs and trigger preventative actions automatically.

The payoff is more resilient infrastructure, a stronger security posture, and IT teams spending less time firefighting and more time moving the business forward.

From hardware-first to intelligent, software-defined experiences

Legacy enterprise networks were static and complex. Each organization had its own complicated mix of hardware, stitched together via multiple management tools that generally didn’t communicate very well with each other.

Diagnosing a network problem meant going through the process of elimination to isolate the failed system, then coordinating with multiple vendors to resolve it, which was often a time-consuming and error-prone affair.

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