I a field service engineer by company standards and I don't live in Texas. I am fed up with temporary contracts that screw up my income and make me have to sign on. I would not mind a hardware engineering role that is permanent but am having trouble finding one because I am only studying for Linux +, CCNA, CCNE, and Cisco. I may have got those abbreaviations wrong because I am concentrating on my Linux exam and don't have much time for windows or cisco at present.
Could someone suggest a software, windows/linux role that I could get accepted for. My ambition is to write firewalls and not to replace hard-drives and fix faulty laser-jet printers. I want out of hardware and into software. My skills are fairly balanced, as I have a lot of experience in hardware and a lot of study in software. I was a desktop support engineer in my first role, then a field service engineer in my last two roles. I like hardware and computers in general, but I do not think there is enough money in hardware unless I get a degree in it to serve my ambitions. As I said earlier, I am open to both Windows and Linux development. I do not have any programming experience, but know my way around windows and linux os's.
Could someone give me some advice, as I am tired of contracts ending early and being turned down for linux perl developer and windows 2003 sys admin roles.

I can't tell you what to do with your life, such as it is- but I can tell you who is working in that field. For hardware, Cisco is it- the degree to secure income would be a CCIE.

For software, it's fairly open. Linux is the top contender there for mass market appeal. www.distrowatch.com for the different firewall/security distributions out there. I personally like clarkconnect and for large corp's I like Astaro linux.

The field with the best staying power would be ipsec with regard to a combination of all of these strategies. Everyone is on contract- that isn't going to change. You can be fired or never called back no matter what you do. But the above listed fields are in demand, so you can always find work.

Thank you for the advice. I will look into the answers you have given me. Still not sure wether to stick with hardware though

Hardware and software is commodity. The only thing you can sell these days is service/labor. Creativity cannot be mass produced. So that's the market to look at. Widget selling went the way of the Dinosaurs when the Information age came about.

Some company's and manager's haven't come to grips with this basic fact yet. And this is biting at the heals of Cisco as we speak. When the linux kernel can do everything Cisco's best can, it's game over for them. And that is going too happen to them just as it is happening to Sun Microsystem's now. It's just evolution. There can't be infinite demand for an infinite supply. It just doesn't work that way.

So what execatly does service/labour involve? Do you meen a company fixing peoples computers and printers or buying hardware in bulk from china, than selling in the west?
I can figure that software is going out, as unless we start living in a police state, realistically who wants to pay for software unless it is open source and you want to support it. Does not everyone except moderate/big companies, use ripped versions of windows and who buys games when you can download them for free?

I like to use the real word for an action. The real word for ripped is stolen and I for one do not use stolen software. If if needs to be boughten then buy it.

But how is taking something that is not locked up stealing?
Imagine if some company had the copyright on learning how to ride a bycicle and anyone exchanging that information was commiting a crime. We would need to staple our tongues to our lips not to speak.
Ripping software is not an easy process and I do not officially condone even though everyone does it. It takes time and I would not bother spending half an hour of my time if I was as rich as the artist who made the album.
Nobody blames corporations for hurting the lives of the poor, is pirating software a taboo or something, when I like the software and can afford to pay for it I do.
And ripping is not the same as stealing because you don't go to jail for ripping unless you do it on a big scale and you sell.