Database Administrator vs Network Engineer

On pay, network engineers come out ahead by about $8k a year at the midpoint of posted bands: $72k–$139k against $75k–$120k for database administrators. These are advertised figures from postings that state a salary, not estimates. By seniority and country: database administrator salary and network engineer salary.

On skills, they are mostly different jobs that happen to share a name or a hallway. The overlap is thin, which is often exactly why people search this pair. The skills both sets of postings want most are Cybersecurity, Azure, AWS, Terraform, Python.

Yes, and the numbers say how far along you already are: a typical database administrator profile covers 36% of what network engineer postings ask for. Our estimate for the move is 12–24 mo. The instrument lists the exact skills that make up the rest.

Going the other way, a typical network engineer profile covers 20% of what database administrator postings ask for. Our estimate for the move is 12–24 mo. The two directions are not symmetric: database administrator to network engineer is the easier move, 36% against 20%.

Right now our board has 88 database administrator openings and 173 network engineer openings, each linking to the original posting. The board refreshes every night, so the counts move with the market. Hiring the most database administrators at the moment: Direct employer (28), Coopers Group AG (3), Leteam Ressources Humaines (2). For network engineers: Direct employer (62), Evergreen Human Resources AG (4), myitjob GmbH (3).