Cisco DevNet Professional is no longer the current certification name. On February 3, 2026, Cisco replaced the DevNet certification track with Automation certifications and introduced CCNA Automation, CCNP Automation, and CCIE Automation. For professional-level candidates, the relevant question is therefore whether CCNP Automation is worth the time and investment.<\/p>\n
The answer depends on your work. CCNP Automation is strongest for engineers who live between networking and software: building automation systems, integrating APIs, managing infrastructure as code, validating changes, improving operations, and securing the pipelines that control infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Cisco states that CCNP Automation requires a core exam plus one concentration exam. The core is 350-901 AUTOCOR v2.0, which focuses on designing, deploying, and managing network automation systems. Current concentrations include enterprise automation and data-center automation paths.<\/p>\n
The Cisco AUTOCOR study blueprint<\/a> is the right internal starting point. Legacy DevNet Professional material can still explain APIs and software concepts, but the current exam has a stronger automation-systems and AI emphasis.<\/p>\n Pure software developers may not need a Cisco credential, and traditional network engineers can work successfully without one. CCNP Automation is most useful when your job requires both domains. You need enough programming knowledge to create reliable tooling and enough infrastructure knowledge to understand what the tooling is changing.<\/p>\n That combination is increasingly important because automation failures are operational failures. A script that changes the wrong interface, exposes a secret, or pushes invalid policy can affect production just as directly as a bad CLI change.<\/p>\n The current core exam includes software design, infrastructure as code, automation operations, validation, telemetry, security, and AI in automation. Cisco\u2019s published topics also include source-of-truth integration, model-driven data, pyATS validation, TLS, secure coding, MCP servers, and evaluating AI recommendations.<\/p>\n This breadth is a reason to pursue the credential only if you want the underlying skills. If your preparation strategy is to memorize endpoint paths and JSON examples, the exam will feel expensive and the resulting knowledge will age quickly.<\/p>\n Enterprise automation is a logical choice for engineers working with campus, WAN, controllers, and enterprise network operations. Data-center automation makes more sense when your daily environment centers on Cisco data-center networking. The concentration should deepen the work you actually do rather than merely add another exam badge.<\/p>\n Choosing a concentration this way also improves study efficiency. You can turn operational problems from your job into labs, scripts, tests, and design reviews instead of inventing artificial examples that disappear after the exam.<\/p>\n Build a small automation repository before scheduling the exam. Include an API client, structured configuration data, validation tests, logging, secret handling, and a rollback or failure path. Then make the project run against a lab environment so you can prove that the system behaves correctly when inputs are wrong.<\/p>\nThe value comes from a hybrid skill set<\/h2>\n
AUTOCOR is broader than API syntax<\/h2>\n
Choose the concentration by the infrastructure you automate<\/h2>\n
Hands-on evidence matters more than the certificate alone<\/h2>\n