2020-June-01

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Inventor at Heart: Get to Know Nagendra Kumar Nainar

Nagendra captioned this photo, “Working in silence.”

The path to becoming a Principal Engineer at Cisco is different for each who achieves the distinction.

For Nagendra Kumar, the path started in India and led him to our RTP site in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Along the way, Nagendra became a biomedical engineer with an ophthalmic company, then joined a Cisco partner where he got the networking bug.

From there, he officially joined Cisco, climbing the ladder of CCIE certifications until he found his true calling as an inventor.

We spoke with Nagendra about his multifaceted role at Cisco, his love of mentoring, and his approach to innovation, which has helped him rack up some 71 issued U.S. patents and counting.

CEC: Tell us about your role as a Principal Engineer in CX (Customer Experience).

Nagendra: I act as a technology strategist. I explore networks and evolving technologies. I create partnerships among engineering teams and the industry to influence growth.

A strong focus area is network operations, administration, and management (OAM). I’ve co-invented and standardized a number of OAM solutions for some of the latest technologies, including segment routing, service function chaining, and more.

I’m also responsible for helping my management with product lifecycle analysis. The goal is to position various enterprise products and service offerings in the lifecycle model. This helps our management understand the quality of the product, quality of engineers, or quality of training to support these products.

CEC: What other roles and responsibilities do you have?

Nagendra: I’m a member of our Innovation Ambassadors Team. We act as agents within the CX organization to help identify innovators’ ideas and get funding to convert a basic idea into a proof of concept or a product.

I am part of a patent review committee, where I review the inventions submitted by other Cisco inventors and help strengthen the Cisco Intellectual Property Rights portfolio.

I’m also part of the Exam Advisory Board, where I actively contribute to exam content development and verifications. And, since developing new talent is key to business growth, I provide mentoring assistance for technical leaders and engineers who are striving to grow in their career path.

From left to right: Carlos Pignataro, Ruba Borno, and Nagendra at a patent award ceremony. Nagendra is holding his 25th patent.

CEC: You are in the Enterprise Networking space. Tell us something that most people don’t know about in this area.

Nagendra: Our customers look to us to help them transform their infrastructure so it’s ready for innovation and rapid change in the era of Globalization 4.0.

We’re helping through innovations in the Software Defined Networking space with SD-WAN, Access, and Perimeter.

We’re helping through Wi-Fi 6, which brings benefits such as power efficiency and capacity.

And we’re helping with OpenRoaming, which allows users to roam across multiple Wi-Fi networks, securely and with no connectivity loss.

Our customers can now push or pull configuration and operational data from the network using automation and network telemetry.

This data opens up new business and service offering opportunities limited only by users’ imaginations.

CEC: You have over 70 issued U.S. patents. Can you give us some highlights?

Nagendra: I’m a big believer in necessity being the mother of invention. Problems are all around us, and it’s up to us to identify the right problem, meaning one that’s worth spending time to solve — both for us and for Cisco.

For example, back in 2011, I was working as a high-touch technical support engineer helping Cisco’s premium customers. A customer was complaining that one of their Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) paths wasn’t working in a particular project.

As we were troubleshooting the case, we found a novel way to validate the backup that would benefit the customer. At that time, we knew how to validate the primary path but not the backup path. I took this as a challenge to find a solution to a problem that was worth solving.

I learned how the MPLS systems worked, and the details of existing MPLS OAM tools. I shared the problem with MPLS and OAM experts like Carlos Pignataro (CTO) and Rajiv Asati (Distinguished Engineer).

Together, we devised a method to not only automatically discover and identify backup paths, but also test the health of backup paths for a given protected path.

We were able to generalize this idea, which had broad business applicability to SPs and enterprises, and concluded it was likely worth patenting. So we drafted the invention, submitted the tool, and finally, it got approved. That was my very first issued U.S. patent!

Bottom line: The problems we come across, even when working on a TAC case, can be converted to patentable solutions.

Nagendra captioned this photo, “My sweet little family — where there is family, there is love.”

CEC: What does it take to be an inventor?

Nagendra: I believe the stereotype of the lone inventor is a myth. In my experience, it’s critical for an inventor to work as part of a team, co-inventing, building up, and discussing ideas. You need to know who to share and brainstorm your problem areas and ideas with.

The solution will be much stronger if it is co-invented with like-minded experts. Sometimes it can even be pivoted and tweaked to solve a completely different problem, perhaps in a completely different technology. This is something I learned from my mentor, Carlos Pignataro.

CEC: What keeps you at Cisco?

Nagendra: Two factors: opportunity and flexibility.

The opportunities you get at Cisco are multidimensional. You have the chance to learn new technologies and keep yourself up to date with the industry. But you can also cross-collaborate, get involved in worthwhile projects, and try to move your ideas into a product or service offering.

Regarding flexibility, I’ve been able to work on anything that interests me. For example, back when I was an HTTS (high touch technical support) engineer, my primary role was to help customers solve their broken networks.

My managers and directors never questioned if I wanted to work with the Engineering team to architect a new engineering solution. Neither did the Engineering team try to stop me working on these solutions just because I was from the CX organization.

I was able to build a reputation. It is always a welcoming and open atmosphere.

Nagendra captioned this photo, “Helping others is the way we help ourselves.”

CEC: What is your proudest accomplishment at Cisco?

Nagendra: One was when I achieved my 100th filed U.S. patent application.

But the moments I’ve felt the most pride have been when I’m mentoring and guiding others in their careers. It makes me really happy to know someone got promoted based on my career advice and guidance.

Another proud moment was when I spent a day painting a refugee’s home. I was invited by Carlos Pignataro as a way of giving back to the community.

We had limited time to paint the house because the family was at risk of having their kids taken away by the authorities due to hygiene concerns. I was so proud of what we did that I talked to my wife about it for a week!

CEC: What’s your process for solving a problem?

Nagendra: Continuous learning is a must. It’s also critical to be what is known as a “T-shaped professional,” which means learning about as many technologies as you can without becoming a jack-of-all-trades.

Within this wide range of technologies, choose one of special interest to you and most relevant to the industry, and go as deep as you possibly can into it.

I’ve found this combination — and the ability to apply concepts from one technology to another technology — equips me to solve just about any kind of problem.

CEC: What advice do you have for people just starting out as an engineer?

Nagendra: First, follow your passion. If you try to do something that you’re not passionate about or interested in, you cannot excel at it, and you will fail.

Next, set short-term goals. It’s easy to set long-term goals, but short-term goals are like milestones that help you achieve your long-term goal.

Third, leave your mark in the work you’re doing.

And lastly, don’t get stuck striving for perfection — there’s no such thing!

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