Roles

Building a network automation practice requires several roles with different competencies and responsibilities. Below is a table with suggested roles and their respective responsibilities. Not all roles are needed from start and depending on the automation scope and size of the organization (Automation group), all roles might not be applicable nor necessary for your automation initiative.

The overall strategy for building an automation practice (stated here in NADM) is to Start small, and incrementally learn, deliver value and grow. Having this strategy in mind and add roles along the journey is therefore the suggested approach.

Automation program management	Responsibility
Automation director	The senior person accountable for delivering on the network automation strategy. Leads the planning and evaluation work.
Product owner	Responsible for the product backlog and its prioritization. The product owner is also accountable for the entire development process.
Program manager	Responsible for the operation of the Automation Group including budget, new hires, resource allocation, sourcing, etc.

Automation group	Responsibility
Network engineer / Network architect	Responsible for the design of network services. Prepares the design documents and makes decisions on how to utilize the network technology. Works on the network. Creates configuration templates, does troubleshooting.
Service developer / Service architect	Responsible for the architecture of the network service automation system*. Designs and implements the network automation system. Develops code and works on troubleshooting.
Tester / QA lead	Responsible for ensuring that the developed code is not only as bug-free as possible, but also that the developed features and functions are documented in the design specifications and that the performance is good enough. The QA lead is also responsible for owning the entire quality of the solution.
DevOps engineer	Responsible for the test and build infrastructure. Responsible for the operation of the network service automation system.
Business analyst	Responsible for gather missing data and analyzing incoming requests from a business perspective. Should be able to respond, from a commercial aspect, to why a certain functionality is being developed before another.
Team lead	Responsible for managing the development team by following the development process. Makes sure developers focus on the right items and have what they need to be able to work efficiently.

External stakeholders	Responsibility
Operations manager	Overall responsibility for the network operation. Plans maintenance. Day-to-day handling of the existing network. Supervises the quality of the network.
Operations engineer	Works on operating the network. Monitoring. Troubleshooting. Fixing errors in operation.
Support engineer	Customer facing, interfaces between users of the network services and the engineers, primarily the operations engineer.