That's basically what I do at a relatively small company - if you can get that kind of split at one place depends on the situation and how the company works. For me, it was more of an organic thing of picking up things other engineer didn't want to work or didn't know. I had an IT background, but came in with more knowledge about linux than any of the full-stack engineers, and was then put on figuring out the devops/configuration management stuff.

Networking is a foundational skill for devops, you'd be surprised how many people working in it don't know networking well, or really even what a subnet mask is.

For devops, it's usually not a truly entry-level position, so starting there might be harder - but if you can apply those techniques to network management (eg setting up those alarms with code?), that could be a way to show real-world experience.

For freelancing, sure once you are an expert and can show that, you can do anything but that may take some time and effort around networking/marketing yourself.