We actually expect our support team (at least portions of them) to build internal apps that automate workflows for ops work or for users. It's not always as complex as a full soft eng role, but some of our IT staff do move on to those positions internally based on the work they do in IT. I think it really depends on the company you do IT for, and what they expect for the role. At Google, our IT staff are full time engineers.

Disclosure: I worked on this program and went through Google's IT Residency Program.