Nine Out of Nine in the DevNet 500

Meet the engineers at World Wide Technology who formed and participated in a study group to learn the skills needed to complete the DevNet Associate exam. The Cisco DevNet Associate certification targets a programmable network developer with hands-on experience developing applications that interface with Cisco platforms. 

The goal of the study group is to provide a collaborative environment. Every member is encouraged to learn, lead and mentor the group. All are encouraged to actively contribute their knowledge and perspective.

The nine out of nine

These WWT engineers are DevNet certified—learn more about their background, experience and motivation for completing the DevNet Associate exam.

Jeff Andiorio — Jeff organized the group, defined the syllabus and schedule and developed the training content for many of the sessions. His background is as a network infrastructure engineer CCIE (# 25011) with extensive experience in all facets of large enterprise network environments. He has experience in working with customers as a delivery engineer and more recently, as an Solutions Architect on the Global Engineering Team. Jeff's interests outside of networking include motorcycles and skating with his family.

Tyler Hatton — Tyler spent the first years of his career as a traditional sysadmin, working directly with developers and supporting a multitude of application platforms and related DevOps toolsets. As a Technical Solutions Architect at WWT, Tyler currently focuses on evangelizing the lessons of applying DevOps and SRE best practices that emerged during his tenure as a sysadmin and how to exercise these practices in the network operations space.

Timothy Hull — Tim joined the study group because he believes the most critical work to do, in every industry, is to build cultures of continuous learning which, in turn, make daily work more fun and fulfilling. Finding ways to automate networks and systems gives people time to learn, innovate, make their organizations better and inspire the people around them to do the same. Tim is a Solutions Architect who loves to teach people how to bring that vision to life.

Joel W. King — Joel contributes to the software-defined networking discipline by presenting at industry conferences such as AnsibleFest, F5 Agility, cybergamut and DevNet Create. Through these efforts, Joel was recognized as a 2019 DevNet Creator. He is a retired CCIE (# 1846) who enjoys mentoring and enabling the success of the next generation of NetDevOps engineers, especially the four legged variety.

Bob Longmore — Bob has a long history of network and systems engineering. In his current role as a Consulting Systems Engineer, he helps large customers navigate new technologies for networking and data centers. With more and more systems becoming API-driven, software-defined and cloud-native, Bob has embraced automation and programmability as a pillar of modern systems engineering. He enjoys learning and teaching about automation and NetDevOps.

Jeffrey Shively — Jeff, a Senior Network Engineer in professional services, is on a mission to automate all the things. He has spent the past few years focusing on not only improving accuracy and speeding up delivery for clients but also eliminating repetitive tasks for himself and his colleagues. Once asked if he was afraid of automating himself right out of a job, he replied, "I won't be happy till I do." When asked to join the DevNet study group, Jeff jumped at the chance. Designing challenges, creating quizzes and assisting on presentations with the rest of the team made learning the blueprint not only enjoyable but straightforward and painless (somewhat). Automation is his obsession. Golf and Wrigley (his office cat) coming in a close second.

Tafsir Thiam — Tafsir is passionate about the intersection of networking and programmability, so he was an easy recruit for the DevNet study group. At heart, he's a network engineer who's been delivering services in large and complex enterprise environments. Over the last couple of years, he has focused on network automation as a means to provide those services. Currently, he's helping the Professional Services organization as a Solutions Architect and discipline lead for network automation. He created much of the content for the challenges and the knowledge checks that the team used as study aids.

Nick Thompson — Nick spent many years working at service providers, and then as a CCIE (# 45731) delivering complex projects while in professional services. Nick has always had a passion for coding and automation because it provided a means to deliver results in a fast and consistent manner. As a Technical Solutions Architect on the Global Engineering Team at WWT, Nick focuses on working with customers to develop automation strategy and drive the adoption of automation inside their organizations.

Corey Wanless — Corey comes from a background of automating storage and compute environments. He brought a unique knowledge from automating the compute and storage parts of different organizations. Although the DevNet exam is focused on networking devices, the certification provides a framework to analyze someone's ability to program any piece of infrastructure using today's development methodologies.

Additional resources

These additional resources are available to assist with learning NetDevOps skills:

• DevNet Study Group Platform
• WWT Advanced Technology Center — Programmability Foundations Lab