u/Ecstatic-Elk1064

Hey r/networking,

I need genuine input from people who have been in this space longer than me or who have made similar transitions. I have a real decision to make and I want perspectives beyond my own bubble.

My background:

13 years in network engineering. Currently Senior Infrastructure Engineer at an IT services company deployed at a financial services client in Singapore. My hands-on experience covers Cisco SD-WAN (deployment and operations), Palo Alto firewalls, Meraki wireless, Catalyst switching, F5 load balancers, AWS, Azure. I lead a small network team and handle everything from presales BOM reviews to DR drills and firewall audits.

The offer:

A global pharma MNC (top 5 globally, 1800+ employees in Singapore) has offered me a Senior Network Capacity & Data Engineer role. This is their APAC IT hub supporting 13+ countries. The toolset is SevOne, ThousandEyes, Moogsoft, LogicMonitor, NetBrain.

Core responsibilities: capacity forecasting using historical and predictive data, bottleneck identification, hardware upgrade planning, KPI and utilisation reports for management, threshold tuning, working with demand management and business units to translate future business plans into network capacity requirements. Sharing JD herewith below.

https://jobs.msd.com/gb/en/job/R358439/Senior-Network-Capacity-Data-Engineer

The money: SGD 1,900/month more than my current salary (approximately SGD 22,800 additional annually). Total package with benefits probably SGD 25k better per year.

What is making me hesitate:

1. No hands-on work. This is purely a capacity planning and data analysis role. I will not be configuring devices, implementing projects, or doing the hands-on network engineering I have done for 13 years. The hiring manager was upfront about this — he said I may lose hands-on experience over time. After 2-3 years in this role, am I less employable as a network engineer? Does the capacity planning specialisation compensate for losing hands-on breadth?

2. Role feels "in between." It is not a pure technical role and not a management role. It sits in a specialist individual contributor space. I am struggling to understand how valued this function actually is within a pharma organisation where IT is a cost centre, not revenue-generating.

3. The role was hard to fill. The hiring manager said he struggled to find candidates matching the profile and that the technical panel felt I did not perform strongly in the second round — but he pushed to hire me anyway. Should I read anything into the fact that this role was open for a long time and they ended up hiring someone who the panel was not fully convinced by?

4. AI obsolescence concern. With tools like Edwin AI in LogicMonitor, SevOne's built-in forecasting, and AIOps platforms getting better every year — how long before routine capacity planning reports are fully automated? Is this a role with a 3-5 year runway before AI makes it redundant or significantly downsized?

5. Pharma IT vulnerability. The company has an active global restructuring programme cutting approximately 6,000 roles (mostly US-based administrative and R&D). Historically in pharma, when costs get cut, IT tends to be targeted before core pharma functions. A capacity planning and reporting role feels more offshorable or eliminatable than an operational network engineering role. Am I overthinking this?

6. Probation period is 6 months. Standard, I know — but I am making a significant life and career change and six months of uncertainty adds pressure.

What the role offers that excites me:

The toolset is genuinely elite — SevOne, ThousandEyes, Moogsoft, NetBrain. If you have worked with these you know what I mean. The scope is APAC-wide across 30+ countries. The data and analytics skills I would build (Python, Power BI) are increasingly important in network engineering. The pharma brand on CV is respected globally. The hiring manager specifically fought to bring me in and was transparent about both the upsides and the downsides of the role.

Specific questions I want input on:

1. Have any of you made a similar transition from hands-on network engineering to capacity planning / network analytics? Did you regret losing the hands-on work? How did it affect your future employability?
2. Is network capacity planning as a standalone function in large enterprises at genuine risk from AI in the next 3-5 years? Or is the human judgment layer still essential enough that the role evolves rather than disappears?
3. For those in pharma IT specifically — how secure is the network/infrastructure function when cost cutting happens? Is capacity planning more or less vulnerable than operational roles?
4. Does a role like this — "Senior Network Capacity & Data Engineer" — have a clear career path in your experience? Or does it tend to be a specialist dead end that limits future options?
5. Would you take SGD 22k additional annual compensation to make this transition at 13 years of experience? Or is the hands-on skill maintenance worth more than the money at this career stage?

Any input from people who have been through similar crossroads genuinely appreciated. Trying to make a well-informed decision rather than an emotional one.

Thanks in advance.