01
Help Desk / Service Desk Analyst
Resolve incidents and requests, learn the estate quickly
- Windows and macOS support
- Ticketing and ITSM basics
- Identity basics
- Networking fundamentals
- Communication
Practice
Career tracks
IT careers are not a single ladder. These are the five tracks most enterprise environments actually hire for, with the progression, focus and underlying skills of each role, described by capability rather than by certification.
5 tracks
Infrastructure & Systems
The classic progression from supporting users to designing the platforms they depend on.
02
Systems Administrator
Operate servers, identity and endpoint management day to day
- Active Directory
- Windows Server
- Endpoint management
- Backup operations
- Scripting
03
Systems Engineer
Build and improve platforms rather than only maintain them
- Virtualization
- Storage
- Automation
- Patch and update design
- Monitoring
04
Infrastructure Engineer
Own core platform design and resilience
- High availability
- Disaster recovery
- Capacity planning
- Infrastructure as code
- Vendor management
05
Infrastructure Architect
Set standards and design across the estate
- Reference architectures
- Requirements and trade offs
- Cost modelling
- Roadmapping
- Stakeholder influence
Networking
Deep specialisation in connectivity, segmentation and the edge.
01
Network Technician
Cabling, switch port work, first line connectivity issues
- Cabling standards
- Switch basics
- IP addressing
- Diagnostics
02
Network Administrator
Operate switching, wireless and remote access
- VLANs
- Wireless operations
- DHCP and DNS
- VPN support
- Monitoring
03
Network Engineer
Design and change routed and segmented networks
- Routing protocols
- Firewall policy
- SD-WAN
- 802.1X and NAC
- Packet analysis
04
Network Architect
Design multi site and hybrid connectivity
- Address space strategy
- Segmentation models
- Cloud interconnect
- Resilience design
- Standards
Security
Detection, response and assurance across the whole environment.
01
SOC Analyst
Triage alerts and escalate real incidents quickly
- SIEM querying
- EDR investigation
- Identity telemetry
- MITRE ATT&CK
- Documentation
02
Security Engineer
Build and tune controls and detections
- Detection engineering
- Endpoint hardening
- Cloud security posture
- Automation
- Vulnerability management
03
Threat Hunter
Find what detections miss and turn findings into detections
- Hypothesis driven hunting
- Data modelling
- Adversary techniques
- Scripting
- Baseline analysis
04
Security Architect
Design control coverage and Zero Trust programmes
- Security architecture
- Risk assessment
- Identity design
- Framework mapping
- Communication
05
Security Leader / CISO
Own risk posture, programme and executive reporting
- Risk management
- Governance
- Incident command
- Budget and vendor strategy
- Board communication
Cloud
Platform engineering and architecture in hyperscale environments.
01
Cloud Administrator
Operate cloud resources, cost and access
- Portal and CLI fluency
- IAM basics
- Monitoring
- Backup
- Tagging discipline
02
Cloud Engineer
Build with infrastructure as code and pipelines
- Terraform or Bicep
- Networking in cloud
- Managed identity
- Containers
- CI/CD
03
Cloud Architect
Design landing zones and workload architecture
- Landing zone design
- Governance and policy
- Resilience patterns
- Cost architecture
- Migration planning
Identity
The fastest growing specialisation, sitting between security and infrastructure.
01
Identity Administrator
Operate directories, groups, MFA and access requests
- Entra ID and AD operations
- MFA support
- Group and licence management
- Access request handling
02
Identity Engineer
Implement SSO, provisioning and access policy
- SAML and OIDC
- SCIM provisioning
- Conditional Access
- PAM tooling
- Scripting
03
IAM Architect
Design the identity control plane end to end
- Identity architecture
- Governance and lifecycle
- Privileged access strategy
- Federation design
- Zero Trust
How to move between tracks
- Depth in one layer transfers better than shallow familiarity with all of them. Networking and identity are the two layers that make every other specialisation easier.
- Automation is now a baseline expectation in every track, not a separate career. Scripting and version control belong in the first two roles of any path.
- Security roles rarely reward people who skipped operations. Understanding how systems are built and run is what makes detection and response judgement possible.
- Architecture is a written discipline. The step from senior engineer to architect is mostly about documenting requirements, constraints and rejected options clearly.
- Certifications open interviews; demonstrated designs, incident write ups and automation close them.
Study routes for each track
Each learning path maps to one or more of the tracks above.