Cisco recently throws more light on new IT roles.

The future of IT jobs is being shaped in part by the current demands created by the way businesses operate. Cisco's report on IT trends says new jobs sure as business translator, network guardian, and network detective are to address changes in IT needs.

Joe Clarke, a distinguished services engineer at Cisco said “It’s clear that these skills are even more critical now — the need for connecting and controlling corporate connectivity and security to home workers begs for new types of expertise,” He further continues This is an evolving skillset for network engineers who are dealing more with the business managers and translating what they need into an IT vocabulary about setting policies and continuing to build the foundation of networking.

Cisco put forward a number of developing roles it expects to see in the future, these include:

· Business translator: The business translator works to better turn the needs of business into service-level, security, and compliance requirements that can be applied and monitored across the network. The translator also works to use the network and network data for business value and innovation, and their knowledge of networking and application APIs will help them glue the business to the IT landscape.

· Network guardian: A network guardian works to bridge network and security architectures. They build the distributed intelligence of the network into security architecture and the SecOps process. This is where networking and security meet, and the guardian is at the center of it all, pulling in and pushing out vast amounts of data, distilling it, and then taking action to identify faults or adapt to shut down attackers.

· Network commander: Builds on controller-based automation and orchestration processes. The network commander takes charge of these processes and practices that ensure the health and continuous operation of the network controller and underlying network.

· Network orchestrator: This position translates business needs into network policy. It focuses on policy translation and automation, and policy alignment across network and IT domains.

· Network detective: A network detective uses and tunes network assurance tools that employ advanced analytics and AI to ensure that the network delivers on business intent. They work with IT service-management processes and SecOps teams to identify network anomalies and close potential security holes. Like the network guardian, they use data proactively to identify faults and attacks.

“These new jobs represent a growing tie between business and technology,” Clarke said. Piece parts of these new criteria are handled by different people but what we are seeing is a need for a hybrid engineer to handle a blend of duties they don’t typically deal with today.

For example, the business intent might be high-quality video calls from a remote workspace that might be moved from one place to another. The network doesn’t understand that but an engineer can take a multistep configuration to make that happen. How you deal with security, control bandwidth, QoS, and use analytics and automation together is part of an evolving role, Clarke said.

In particular, the critical skillset network engineers need to stay on top of their career game is constantly changing at a hastened pace with an increased focus on melding security and intent-based-software skills.