I Ranked the BEST and WORST Tech Careers to Start in 2026 (For Beginners)

Summary

The speaker ranks tech careers for beginners entering the field in 2026, assessing each by time to a first job offer, earning potential, resilience to AI, and career leverage—the ability to progress to more advanced work without extensive retraining.

His central advice is to prioritize technical roles that involve building systems and solving difficult problems. He cautions against relying on certifications or choosing a role solely because it seems accessible.

Career Rankings

Tier Roles Main points S Cloud engineer; forward deployed engineer (FDE) Cloud engineering can be a viable entry point for beginners who build practical skills. The work includes designing, securing, and maintaining cloud infrastructure, with transferable skills in architecture, scripting, infrastructure as code, and pipelines. The speaker sees strong pay, low near-term AI replacement risk, and broad career paths. FDEs put AI products into production within customer organizations. The role can pay well and build valuable engineering and business skills, but it is not entry-level; the speaker describes it as a later-career specialization. A AI engineer AI engineers build software applications using existing AI models, rather than necessarily training the models themselves. The speaker sees excellent earning potential, durability, and career leverage, but emphasizes that the role generally requires prior experience and is not a first tech job. B Software engineer; DevOps engineer Software engineering remains valuable, with strong earning potential and paths into architecture, platform work, and AI engineering. However, beginners face a competitive market and broad expectations that may include cloud, architecture, and AI skills. DevOps offers good pay and routes into platform engineering or site reliability engineering, but employers increasingly expect several years of experience, making it a poor beginner target. C GRC analyst; data analyst; network engineer GRC analysts handle security policies, compliance checks, evidence, and documentation. The role can be accessible without a technical background, but the speaker warns of salary ceilings and automation exposure. Data analysts turn business data into decision-support insights. The role is accessible, but routine analysis may be automated, and advancement requires deliberately gaining more technical skills. Network engineers build and maintain physical networks, often through hands-on, on-site work. The speaker considers the work relatively resistant to AI but says progression can be limited without retraining. D QA/software tester; systems or network administrator QA testers find software bugs and may write automated tests. The role can be accessible, particularly in manual testing, but the speaker sees limited pay and advancement, as well as high automation risk. Systems and network administrators maintain servers, accounts, backups, patches, and networks. The role can be an entry point, but the speaker sees a relatively low pay ceiling and limited progression without acquiring additional skills. F IT help desk; cloud support engineer IT help desk staff handle issues such as passwords, laptops, and software problems. The speaker considers the role easy to enter but low-paid and highly exposed to automation; without further training, it may become a long-term dead end. Cloud support engineers troubleshoot cloud services and follow runbooks. Though accessible, the role does not necessarily teach cloud design or infrastructure building, so it may not lead naturally to cloud engineering.

Key Takeaways

• Accessibility and long-term career value are different things. A role may be easy to enter without being a strong long-term choice.
• The speaker favors work involving infrastructure design, engineering judgment, and complex business problems, which he considers harder to automate.
• AI engineering, FDE, and DevOps are described as promising specialties but generally not suitable as a beginner’s first tech role.
• Accessible roles such as help desk, QA, and cloud support may provide a starting point, but progression depends on developing additional technical skills.
• The video is a career-ranking guide, not a tutorial; it does not provide step-by-step training instructions.

Main Speaker and Source

The rankings and career assessments are the views of Suleyman (Soleyman) Shahir, speaking on the Tech With Soleyman channel. He bases them on his stated experience in software engineering, cloud, DevOps, architecture, and AI consulting.