Network Engineers Take On NetDevOps Roles To Advance Stalled Automation Efforts
Networkworld, Thursday, January 29th, 2026
As network automation matures, a new breed of hybrid professionals with network engineering and software development skills is emerging. But for enterprises, landing these IT pros isn't about finding unicorns. It's about evolving existing teams and changing how networks are operated.
As network automation evolves beyond scripts to a more sophisticated approach to network operations, a new skill set and role are emerging across enterprise environments: NetDevOps.
NetDevOps can mean different things across organizations, but generally, it is about automating networks in ways that align with DevOps principles. Those principles include continuous improvement (CI), continuous deployment (CD), and other application development approaches applied to network infrastructure. In more advanced environments, organizations start to treat networks as applications, making them more programmatic so that services can be accessed without deep networking know-how.