Will AI replace network engineers?

Big thanks to ‪@Cisco‬ for sponsoring this video and sponsoring my trip to Cisco Live Amsterdam. Will AI replace network engineers in 2026? In this video, I sit down with Joe Vaccaro (VP/GM of Cisco ThousandEyes) to reveal the truth about "Agentic Ops" and how it differs from traditional AIOps. We dive deep into the new "Digital Teammate" concept within ThousandEyes and demo exactly how AI agents can autonomously troubleshoot complex network outages (like DHCP and DNS failures) in seconds. Instead of taking your job, Joe explains how these agents act as a force multiplier for your career—handling the tedious "mean time to innocence" tasks so you can focus on architecture. If you are worried about the future of the CLI or manual troubleshooting, you need to see this demo. Key Topics Covered: • Cisco Agentic Ops Explained: Joe Vaccaro breaks down the shift to autonomous reasoning. • ThousandEyes Demo: Watch an AI agent diagnose a DHCP failure and suggest the exact fix (subnet expansion). • Views Explainability: How to troubleshoot "unknown paths" and ISP outages (like AWS/Azure) automatically. • Career Survival Guide: Why Cisco believes AI will train the next generation of CCIE-level engineers, not replace them. //Joe Vaccaro’s SOCIAL // Cisco Blogs: https://blogs.cisco.com/author/vaccaroj LinkedIn: / joevaccaro X: https://x.com/joevaccaro X: https://x.com/thousandeyes Website: https://www.thousandeyes.com/ // David's SOCIAL // Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidbombal Instagram: www.instagram.com/davidbombal LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal Facebook: www.facebook.com/davidbombal.co TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal YouTube: / @davidbombal Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/3f6k6gE... SoundCloud: / davidbombal Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... // MY STUFF // https://www.amazon.com/shop/davidbombal // SPONSORS // Interested in sponsoring my videos? Reach out to my team here: sponsors@davidbombal.com // MENU // 0:00 - Coming up 0:42 - Troubleshooting 02:00 - ThousandEyes Updates 03:52 - Demo 1 06:50 - Agentic Steps on a network 07:26 - Demo 2 10:50 - ThousandEyes Outages Page 11:34 - Agents in ThousandEyes 13:49 - New Demands by AI 14:14 - Will AI Replace Network Engineers ? 15:15 - Will The Agents Need a Human in the loop? 16:10 - Will This become More Autonomous ? 16:48 - Conclusion & Outro Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel! Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only. #cisco #ciscolive #ciscoemea