Cisco Chief Automation Officer Talks 100x Engineers vs. Tech Debt
InformationWeek, Thursday, October 22nd, 2026
Cisco's Srini Namineni says AI makes coding and testing faster, but design decisions, tech debt and agent costs remain bottlenecks.
Srini Namineni, Cisco's chief automation officer since September 2025, leads IT automation strategy and the company's internal AI.
He says AI can create 10x or even 100x engineers, but faster code and testing don't remove the bottlenecks in deciding what to design and how to deploy it, and businesses still carry years of backlog and tech debt.
In late August, Cisco gave every employee an in-house personal AI agent with guardrails that handles calendars, room booking and approvals with a human in the loop.
Namineni warns about rogue agent actions and surprise token bills, but says Cisco has taken "the leap of faith" while monitoring in the background.