Fractional network engineering for Chicago
The network engineer you’d hire. Without the $160,000.
Most downtown businesses need senior network work a few days a month, not forty hours a week. Retain it instead — and have the work done evenings and weekends, which is when it belongs anyway.
Prices published on this site. No multi-year term. Free network assessment.
Hire, or retain?
Move the two numbers. The maths runs in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
- Hiring, per year
- —
- —
- Retaining, per year
- —
- —
—
- $650
- a month keeps senior engineers across your network — hours billed on top, all published
- 69 hrs
- a month is where hiring starts to beat retaining. Below that, it isn’t close
- Evenings
- and weekends, by design — cutovers happen when nobody is working
- No first line
- a senior engineer every visit. Nobody junior learning on your network
Hire, retain, or an MSP
Three ways to get network expertise. They are not close in cost.
A senior network engineer downtown is a $160,000-a-year commitment once you load the salary — and you would be bidding for them against banks and trading firms. Here is the honest comparison, including where hiring genuinely wins.
| Hiring a senior network engineer | Retaining us | A generalist MSP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per year | $160,000$125,000 salary + 28% burden | $30,000$650/mo retainer + 10 hrs/mo | Per seat, every monthScales with your headcount, not with what you actually need |
| Seniority you actually get | Senior — if you can land oneAt this salary you are competing with banks and trading firms | A senior engineer, every visitThere is no first line to get past | Whoever is on the rotaFirst line is usually the least experienced person |
| When the work happens | Business hoursSo cutovers cost you downtime, or overtime | Evenings and weekendsWhen freight lifts are free and nobody is working | Business hoursChange windows negotiated, often at a premium |
| Utilisation | You pay for 40 hoursMost small businesses need a handful | You pay for the hours used | Flat fee whether or not you call |
| If one person is away | You are downHoliday, illness, or they resign | The other one coversTwo engineers, shared documentation | Covered |
| Who knows your network | One person — who may leaveAnd takes the documentation in their head | Both engineers, and it is written down | A rotating queueYou re-explain your setup most visits |
| Depth on networking specifically | Depends entirely on the hire | It is the specialismPlus specialists brought in for anything outside it | Broad, and usually shallow here |
| Recruiting, reviews, turnover | Yours to handleAnd to repeat in two years | Not your problem | Not your problem |
| Commitment | Employment | 30 days’ noticeNo multi-year term | Typically one to three years |
Salary figure is deliberately conservative. Published Chicago averages for a senior network engineer in 2026: $128,579 on Indeed, $127,517 on ZipRecruiter, $117,690 on Salary.com, $167,360 on Glassdoor. The 28% burden covers payroll tax, health insurance, workers’ comp, paid time off and equipment. Your own numbers will differ — the calculator uses whatever you type in.
Deliberately small
Two engineers, both senior, with specialists brought in for work that sits outside networking. That is the whole firm, and it is the point: there is no first line to get past, nobody junior learning on your network, and no account manager between you and the person doing the work. Two also means neither of us is a single point of failure — the documentation is shared and either one can pick up your site.
Being small also means being selective. We work best with reasonable clients who want things done properly, and we are not the right fit for everyone — the first conversation is where we both find that out. In return, everything we commit to is put in writing, work runs to a schedule agreed up front, and every message gets a reply by the next business day, if not sooner. What it is not is a first-line helpdesk your whole staff ring all day about passwords and printers — that is a different service, and a generalist does it better and cheaper. And past roughly 69 hours a month — about two days a week of genuine network work — employing somebody starts to make more sense than retaining us. You will hear that on the first call rather than eighteen months in.
The part nobody else offers
Downtown network work belongs after hours.
This is not a compromise dressed up as a feature. It is when the work is supposed to happen, and it is the single biggest practical advantage of retaining a specialist rather than employing one.
Nobody is working
A switch replacement, a firewall migration or a core cutover drops the network. Do it at 2pm and you have stopped the business; do it at 8pm and nobody notices. Daytime providers either work around that or charge you overtime for the privilege.
The freight lift is free
Downtown buildings ration the freight elevator and the loading dock, and the windows are frequently outside business hours anyway. Scheduling around them is normal here rather than a surprise discovered on the day.
Mistakes stay cheap
If a cutover goes sideways at 9pm there is a whole night to roll it back before anyone needs the network. The same mistake at 11am is an incident, and incidents are what make people distrust their own infrastructure.
The other thing nobody else does
Your network, documented and answerable.
The most expensive part of a support call is remembering. Most providers re-learn your network on your clock, every visit. We document it once and query it in seconds.
Twenty minutes of archaeology
Watch a tech on an unfamiliar network: which port feeds the conference room, what the guest VLAN is numbered, which PDF holds the reset procedure. On hourly billing you pay for all of it — while the system stays down.
Asked in plain English
Every site we work gets documented as we go — equipment, circuits, VLANs, port maps, building access — in a system we query mid-job, alongside the manufacturer manuals for your exact gear. The fix starts immediately.
And it is yours
The documentation belongs to you, stays current on every visit, and never lives in one person’s head. It is why the second call to your site is always faster than the first — and why leaving us would be easy, which is exactly why clients do not.
What a call with us feels like
We are not there to judge how it broke.
Almost every support call starts the same way: explaining, apologising, “it wasn’t me.” Skip it. We do not need to know, and we are not keeping score.
We have seen every version of every mess. Nothing surprises us any more, and how it got there is genuinely not our concern. The job is to get it back to working and hand you your day back — not to redesign your life while we are in the building.
We are not consultants who arrive to make a room feel judged. We are the people who fix it and get out of the way, and leave everyone to what they were doing before the problem showed up. If you already have an IT person, we are on their side: nobody looks bad, they just get their evening back.
Two ways in
Most work arrives one of two ways.
Retain a network engineer
A low monthly retainer keeps senior engineers across your network — monitoring, firmware, documentation, and people who already know your setup when something breaks. Projects and call-outs billed on top at published rates.
- Free assessment before anything is quoted
- Monitoring and firmware on network gear
- Documentation kept current — and yours
- Priority scheduling for evening and weekend work
- A senior engineer every visit, no first line
$650/month retainer. $185/hr scheduled, $145/hr remote. Projects quoted fixed.
How retaining works →Co-managed support
You already have an IT person or an MSP, and they are excellent at the things they do — but the network is not one of them. We sit behind them on the infrastructure work rather than replacing anybody.
- Network design, switching, Wi-Fi and firewalls
- Cutovers and migrations run out of hours
- Escalation for problems that have stalled
- We work with your provider, not around them
Hourly or retained. No requirement to move anything else.
Co-managed IT →Services
What actually gets done.
Fractional Network Engineer
Senior expertise on retainer, not on payroll.
Read more →Co-Managed IT
Sits behind your IT person or your MSP.
Read more →Networks, Wi-Fi & Cabling
Switching, wireless and Cat6 done properly.
Read more →Servers & Cloud
Windows Server, monitoring, on-premise or cloud.
Read more →Microsoft 365 Migration
Office 365, Exchange and Google Workspace moves.
Read more →Hardware & Office Tech Consulting
Vendor-neutral advice on what to buy, and setting it up.
Read more →Private AI Server
Your own ChatGPT-style assistant, inside your office.
Read more →Remote Tech Advisor
An experienced IT person to ask, anywhere in the US.
Read more →Backup & Recovery
Local plus off-site, tested restores.
Read more →Cybersecurity
Segmentation, MFA, email, the practical controls.
Read more →Computer Repair
Small office and home, evenings and weekends.
Read more →Getting started
Three steps, no sales sequence.
A free network assessment
A walk of the floor and the comms closet, an inventory of what you own, and an honest read on what is ageing, unpatched or about to become a problem. You get the written findings whether or not you go ahead — they are yours.
A number, not a proposal deck
Projects quoted fixed after we have seen the building. Ongoing work is the published retainer plus published hourly. If retaining is the wrong shape for you, that gets said here rather than after you have signed something.
Work scheduled when it suits the building
Evenings and weekends for anything that touches the network, planned around freight windows and your own quiet periods, with a rollback plan written before we start rather than improvised at midnight.
Coverage
Downtown and the neighbourhoods around it.
The central business district first, because that is where the density is and where getting into the building is half the job. No trip charge anywhere on this list, and certificates of insurance kept current for building management so access is never what holds up the work.
- The Loop
- West Loop
- River North
- Fulton Market
- Near North
- Streeterville
- Gold Coast
- South Loop
- Old Town
- Lincoln Park
- Wicker Park
- Bucktown
- Logan Square
- Pilsen
- Lakeview
- Ravenswood
FAQ
Questions we get asked
Is retaining engineers actually cheaper than hiring one?
For most businesses, comfortably. A senior network engineer in Chicago costs about $160,000 a year once payroll tax, insurance, workers’ comp and paid time off are loaded on, and at that salary you are competing with banks and trading firms to land one. Retaining costs $650 a month plus the hours you use — roughly $30,000 a year at 10 hours a month.
The break-even is around 69 hours a month. Past that, hiring genuinely starts to win, and you will be told so.
Why is the work done evenings and weekends?
Because that is when network work belongs. A switch replacement or firewall migration drops the network while it happens — at 2pm that stops your business, at 8pm nobody notices. Downtown it matters more still, because freight lifts and dock access are rationed and frequently only available outside business hours.
It is the standard rate rather than an out-of-hours premium, because it is the normal working pattern here.
How big is the team?
Two senior engineers, plus specialists brought in for work outside networking. Deliberately small — it means there is no first line to get past, nobody junior learning on your network, and no account manager between you and the person doing the work.
Two also means neither of us is a single point of failure: documentation is shared and either engineer can pick up your site.
Is this a managed IT provider?
No, and the difference matters. There is no helpdesk your staff can ring all day and no per-seat contract. This is narrow and deep — the network, done by senior engineers, priced by the hour. Plenty of clients keep a generalist MSP for the day-to-day and use us behind them.
What if something breaks at three in the morning?
Ring, and you will get an honest answer on how quickly someone can get to it. Monitoring runs continuously too, so a fair number of problems get noticed before anyone reports them.
The thing that is scheduled rather than instant is planned work — cutovers, cabling, hardware swaps — which goes in an evening or weekend slot.
Do we have to explain how it got this bad?
No, and please do not feel you have to. Almost every call starts with an apology or an “it wasn’t me,” and we genuinely do not need it. We have seen every version of every mess. The job is to get it back to working and hand you your day back — how it got there is not something we are keeping score of.
The same goes for your IT person if you have one. We are not there to make anyone look bad; we are there to fix it and get out of the way.
Do you lock people into long contracts?
No. Thirty days’ notice on the retainer, either direction, and no retainer is required at all for project or ad-hoc work.
What if we already have an IT person or an MSP?
That is often the best arrangement. The network and infrastructure work comes here, they keep the relationship and the day-to-day, and documentation goes to both of you. Nobody gets replaced.
Do you work with home users too?
Yes, hourly and with no contract — a diagnostic, a firm price, and an honest answer about whether a machine is worth repairing. See the computer repair page.
Work out whether hiring or retaining wins.
Bring the hours you think you need and the salary you had in mind. Ten minutes on the phone usually settles it — including when the answer is that you should hire someone.