How To Become A Server Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a server engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Dr. Ariful Azad Ph.D.

A server engineer takes the lead in maintaining the server and desktop infrastructure across various locations of an organization to ensure that its users can easily access mission-critical applications. The individual troubleshoots issues at both the server and PC levels.

Server engineers keep learning new technologies to be useful to enterprises. If they obtain a master's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related discipline, it will be advantageous in the long run. According to BLS, network and computer systems administrators' job opportunities may grow six percent during 2016 and 2026, the average for all occupations. So, in the future, server engineers will be in even higher demand because organizations will continue to invest in newer, emerging technologies.

The average yearly salary of a server engineer is $74,340 in the United States. However, freelancers can charge up to $30 per hour.

What general advice would you give to a server engineer?

Dr. Ariful Azad Ph.D.

Director of Graduate Studies for the Dept. of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Assistant Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington

Look for a job that you would enjoy doing, even if it takes some time to find such a position. Internships are great to explore various options.

ScoreServer EngineerUS Average

Salary

7.8

Avg. Salary $105,940

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

5.7

Growth rate 5%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.6

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.31%

Asian 12.14%

Black or African American 8.37%

Hispanic or Latino 12.08%

Unknown 5.04%

White 62.06%

Gender

female 8.13%

male 91.87%

Age - 42

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 42

Stress level

5.7

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

6.7

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

7.1

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a server engineer

Explore server engineer education requirements

Most common server engineer degrees

Bachelor's

60.8 %

Associate

22.4 %

Master's

11.3 %

Start to develop specific server engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
Windows Server	10.41%
PowerShell	5.90%
Linux	5.26%
Java	4.88%
Microsoft Windows	4.04%

Complete relevant server engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New server engineers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a server engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real server engineer resumes.

Research server engineer duties and responsibilities

Work with SAN, database, network, and backup administrators to deploy and manage infrastructure as a team.
Maintain, monitor, manage and right size the VM environment using industry virtualization tools on a daily basis.
Deploy and manage Citrix environments utilizing publish desktops and publish applications to make available to users both internally and externally.
Convert to GC and DNS server and DHCP server.

Prepare your server engineer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your server engineer resume.

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