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The differences between senior network engineers and network consultants can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 1-2 years to become both a senior network engineer and a network consultant. Additionally, a senior network engineer has an average salary of $111,707, which is higher than the $89,303 average annual salary of a network consultant.
The top three skills for a senior network engineer include switches, BGP and OSPF. The most important skills for a network consultant are appeals, firewall, and windows server.
| Senior Network Engineer | Network Consultant | |
| Yearly salary | $111,707 | $89,303 |
| Hourly rate | $53.71 | $42.93 |
| Growth rate | 5% | 5% |
| Number of jobs | 35,428 | 58,194 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 65% | Bachelor's Degree, 60% |
| Average age | 43 | 43 |
| Years of experience | 2 | 2 |
A senior network engineer is responsible for managing the organization's network infrastructure, handling advanced network issues, upgrading the system's design for optimization, configuring network features, and ensuring the network's highest security measures to avoid unauthorized access and suspicious activities. Senior network engineers work with network architects to implement network designs, run diagnostic tests, and create network solution reports for review and recovery reference. A senior network engineer must have excellent communication and organization skills and broad knowledge of the technology industry, programming languages, and system codes.
Network consultants are information technology (IT) professionals who are responsible for designing, setting up, and maintaining computer networks for an organization or at a client location. These consultants are required to meet with the manager of an organization and network engineers to discuss their networking requirements. By supervising a team of IT professionals, these consultants must administer technical issues and fix infrastructure issues onsite. Network consultants must also maintain documentation for IT infrastructure as well as coordinate network documentation with account managers.
Senior network engineers and network consultants have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Senior Network Engineer | Network Consultant | |
| Average salary | $111,707 | $89,303 |
| Salary range | Between $85,000 And $145,000 | Between $60,000 And $132,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | Mountain View, CA |
| Highest paying state | Washington | California |
| Best paying company | The Citadel | Dell |
| Best paying industry | Finance | Manufacturing |
There are a few differences between a senior network engineer and a network consultant in terms of educational background:
| Senior Network Engineer | Network Consultant | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 65% | Bachelor's Degree, 60% |
| Most common major | Electrical Engineering | Computer Science |
| Most common college | - | Stanford University |
Here are the differences between senior network engineers' and network consultants' demographics:
| Senior Network Engineer | Network Consultant | |
| Average age | 43 | 43 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 93.2% Female, 6.8% | Male, 87.0% Female, 13.0% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 8.2% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 11.9% Asian, 13.5% White, 61.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3% | Black or African American, 9.0% Unknown, 5.1% Hispanic or Latino, 12.7% Asian, 11.3% White, 61.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3% |
| LGBT Percentage | 9% | 9% |