Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Eric Chou welcomes Juulia Santala, a Solutions Engineer at Cisco, to discuss her transition from traditional network programmability to cutting-edge AI research. They explore how she moved beyond simple RAG to make AI truly agentic, while solving some hallucination problems in production configurations. They also cover the number one skill network engineers need by 2027, and the biggest practical takeaway from Juulia’s conference session.
This episode was recorded live at AutoCon 5.
AdSpot Sponsor: Itential
Itential’s FlowAI delivers agentic operations for infrastructure - meaning easily build AI agents that actually work the way engineers need them to: governed, deterministic, and built for production. Add intelligent automation to your network operations without the usual AI chaos. Find out more at itential.com/flowai
Links:
Juulia Santala on LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/juuliasantala
Juulia Santala’s Past Cisco Live Presentations - ciscolive.com/on-demand/on-demand-library.html?search=%22Juulia%20Santala%22#
Network Automation Nerds is part of the Packet Pushers network. Visit our website to find more great networking and technology podcasts, along with tutorial videos, the Human Infrastructure newsletter, and loads more resources for building your IT career. packetpushers.net
Eric Chou welcomes Juulia Santala, a Solutions Engineer at Cisco, to discuss her transition from traditional network programmability to cutting-edge AI research. They explore how she moved beyond simple RAG to make AI truly agentic, while solving some hallucination problems in production configurations. They also cover the number one skill network engineers need by 2027, and the biggest practical takeaway from Juulia’s conference session.
This episode was recorded live at AutoCon 5.
AdSpot Sponsor: Itential
Itential’s FlowAI delivers agentic operations for infrastructure - meaning easily build AI agents that actually work the way engineers need them to: governed, deterministic, and built for production. Add intelligent automation to your network operations without the usual AI chaos. Find out more at itential.com/flowai
Links:
Juulia Santala on LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/juuliasantala
Juulia Santala’s Past Cisco Live Presentations - ciscolive.com/on-demand/on-demand-library.html?search=%22Juulia%20Santala%22#
Network Automation Nerds is part of the Packet Pushers network. Visit our website to find more great networking and technology podcasts, along with tutorial videos, the Human Infrastructure newsletter, and loads more resources for building your IT career. packetpushers.net
