As AI redefines engineers' roles, Cisco CPO Jeetu Patel reveals 'grossly underestimated' skills needed for the future

Time of India

2 days ago

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In a world increasingly reshaped by artificial intelligence, the engineering profession is undergoing a rapid evolution. While many tech companies are rethinking the size and scope of their engineering teams, Cisco is taking a different path — one rooted in expansion and reimagination. Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, recently spoke to Business Insider, offering a compelling vision of how the engineer of tomorrow will look very different from the one we know today.While the industry buzzes with discussions of automation replacing human roles, Cisco is "unapologetically hiring" engineers, Patel revealed. With 27,000 engineers already on board, the company isn't slowing down. "We feel more constrained now than ever before on not having enough engineers to get prosecuted all the ideas that we've got going internally," he said. For Cisco, the limitation isn't in the talent they have — it's in the untapped ideas they want to bring to life.That said, Patel is not blind to the reality of AI redefining roles. Cisco has already partnered with OpenAI to integrate its Codex AI coding assistant into the company's workflow. The tool performs tasks like code writing, bug fixing, and test running — effectively becoming a digital co-pilot to human engineers. This shift will make engineers significantly more productive, freeing them from routine coding and allowing them to focus on high-impact innovation.'AI will make engineers 10 to 50 times more productive,' Patel noted. 'The speed at which an idea becomes a product will go from months to minutes.'So, what does the engineer of the future need to focus on? Patel emphasized that traditional skills like syntax understanding — while still important — will become less central. Instead, two 'grossly underestimated' skills will come to define engineering success in the AI era.As AI tools become more sophisticated, engineers will need to master the art of managing not just human teams but also agent ecosystems. These AI agents will communicate, collaborate, and solve problems in tandem — and someone needs to oversee that orchestration. Patel believes that knowing how to delegate intelligently between humans and machines will be 'super important.'Beyond coordination lies creativity. According to Patel, the true value of a future engineer will rest not in how well they code, but in how well they imagine. As AI reduces the grunt work, engineers will have more space to ideate and innovate. Tools like Codex, he says, 'unlock human imagination,' removing bottlenecks created by a scarcity of developers.This paradigm shift isn't just about productivity — it's about job satisfaction. Patel believes that engineers, liberated from repetitive tasks, will find more meaning in their roles. "This evolution will improve output capacity, but also the satisfaction that someone gets from a job," he said. In his words, the only remaining constraint in the engineering world will be one's imagination.As Cisco redefines what it means to be an engineer in the AI age, the message is clear: the future belongs not to those who code the fastest, but to those who think the furthest.