Yolandi Cloete – Mission Critical: Addressing the Talent Black Hole in Network Engineering
Yolandi Cloete is Interconnection Community and Academy Manager at DE-CIX, a leading global internet exchange operator. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Africa’s peering community, she leads international initiatives that expand access to interconnection and peering knowledge, encourage collaboration, and support community growth worldwide. A committed connector and educator, Yolandi actively contributes to industry forums and works to strengthen the foundations of a more connected digital future.
At BalticNOG 2026, Yolandi will bring this work to the stage with her talk, “Mission Critical: Addressing the Talent Black Hole in Network Engineering.”
An Industry Losing Experience Faster Than It’s Replacing It
The network engineering and interconnection industry is facing a real problem: experienced engineers are aging out, and not enough new talent is coming in to replace them. Yolandi will point to hard numbers behind this. In late 2025, 76% of IT companies worldwide couldn’t fill vacancies for tech specialists, and roughly a quarter of network engineers are expected to retire within the next five years.
Part of the problem is perception: network engineering often loses out to flashier-sounding roles in cloud computing and cybersecurity. The rest is structural. Training resources for interconnection and peering are scattered across blogs, forums, vendor documentation, and academic papers, with no clear path for newcomers to follow. Meanwhile, senior engineers rarely have the time to mentor, which slows onboarding and lets institutional knowledge slip through the cracks instead of getting passed on.
Building a Clearer Path In
Yolandi will share the project she’s built to address this directly: the Interconnection Academy. It brings together training content in one place, free to access, available on demand, and structured from beginner through advanced levels, covering both the technical and business sides of interconnection and peering. The goal is to give new entrants an actual path to follow instead of a scattered pile of links.
None of this works alone, so Yolandi is partnering with universities and industry experts to build it out, treating the talent problem as something the industry solves together rather than company by company.
Why You Shouldn’t Miss This Talk
If your team has struggled to find or train new network engineers, or you’re worried about what happens when your most experienced people retire, this talk speaks directly to that. Yolandi brings both the scale of the problem and a concrete project already underway to address it.
Whether you’re hiring, mentoring, or just getting started in the field yourself, this talk gives you a clear look at what’s being built to close the gap.
đź“… When: 23-24 September 2026
đź“Ť Where: BalticNOG 2026, Riga, Latvia
đź”— Don’t miss BalticNOG! Register today: https://balticnog.org/tickets/
