This article is based on an interview with Steven Armstrong, DevOps solution architect and author of DevOps for Networking (Packt Publishing), originally published on jaxenter.com. The interview explores how DevOps principles are reshaping network engineering and what skills practitioners need to stay ahead.
Why Networking Needs DevOps
DevOps culture has transformed software development and operations — but networking has traditionally lagged behind. Manual switch configuration, siloed network teams, and change-averse processes are still common in many organizations. The question Armstrong addresses in his book is whether incorporating networking into a DevOps culture can genuinely boost organizational agility and growth. His answer is a clear yes — and the tooling is rapidly catching up to make it practical.
The Future of DevOps in Networking
Intent-Based Networking
According to Armstrong, the most significant shift on the horizon is intent-based networking (IBN). Rather than configuring each network device individually, intent-based systems allow network architects to define a high-level blueprint of what they want the network to do — and then automatically push that intent to all target devices.
Armstrong cites Apstra as an early example of this model. With an intent-based approach, a network architect can express a desired topology — for instance, a leaf-spine data center architecture — and the system handles the per-device configuration automatically. If the design changes later, the network converges to the new intent without engineers touching each switch manually.
This model has clear parallels with infrastructure-as-code in the software world: you declare desired state, and the platform handles reconciliation. For private cloud and data center environments, IBN promises to abstract away the day-to-day management burden of individual network devices.
Container Networking
Container networking has become a first-class concern as Kubernetes adoption has grown. Armstrong highlights open source projects such as Calico, which provides container networking for both private and public cloud environments alongside Kubernetes. Calico favors network-native principles — using standard IP routing rather than complex overlay networks — making it more approachable for network engineers familiar with traditional routing and switching concepts.
The broader trend is a move away from opaque overlay abstractions toward container network architectures that network teams can reason about using existing skills.
Application-Centric Load Balancing
On the load balancing side, Armstrong points to application-centric software load balancers — such as Avi Networks (now VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer) — that bring built-in analytics and the ability to scale based on real-time throughput. These platforms expose developer-friendly APIs, making them well-suited for integration into automated deployment pipelines.
The unifying theme across all three areas — intent-based networking, container networking, and modern load balancers — is that networks are being built for automation from the ground up, with APIs that DevOps toolchains can consume directly.
Key Tools and Languages for NetDevOps Engineers
Bridging the gap between traditional networking and DevOps requires network engineers to develop software skills — and software engineers to understand networking fundamentals. Armstrong’s recommended skill set covers four broad areas:
1. Programming and Templating
- Python — The dominant scripting language in network automation. Used for everything from parsing device output to calling network APIs.
- Jinja2 templates — Widely used to render device configurations dynamically from structured data.
- YAML — The standard data format for defining variables, inventories, and playbooks in most network automation frameworks.
2. Configuration Management
- Ansible — The most widely adopted configuration management tool for network automation. Its agentless architecture suits network devices well, and it has extensive modules for vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, and Arista.
3. Version Control
- Git — Treating network configurations as code means storing them in version control. Git is the industry standard, enabling change tracking, peer review, and rollback for network changes — just as it does for application code.
4. CI/CD Pipelines
- Jenkins — A mature, self-hosted CI/CD server with broad plugin support.
- Travis CI — A cloud-based CI service, commonly used for open source projects.
- Concourse CI — A pipeline-centric CI/CD tool favored in environments that want a declarative, container-native approach to build and deployment workflows.
Together, these tools allow network changes to follow the same review, test, and deploy lifecycle as application code — reducing the risk of manual configuration errors and enabling faster, more auditable change management.
Takeaways for DevOps and Network Engineers
- Networks are becoming programmable. Vendor APIs and intent-based platforms mean that manual CLI configuration is no longer the only — or best — option for managing network infrastructure at scale.
- The skills gap is real, but closeable. Network engineers who invest in Python, Ansible, and Git will be significantly better positioned as automation becomes standard practice.
- DevOps principles translate directly. Infrastructure-as-code, version control, CI/CD, and peer review are as applicable to network configuration as they are to application deployment.
- Container networking is not optional. As Kubernetes becomes the default runtime for many organizations, understanding how container networking works — and how to operate it — is increasingly a core networking skill.
For engineers looking to go deeper, Armstrong’s book DevOps for Networking (Packt Publishing) provides a structured introduction to applying DevOps workflows specifically to network engineering challenges.