NA007 - Deep Dive on Pulumi with Scott Lowe

Network Auto Magic Podcast — 2026 Season Premiere  

Deep Dive on Pulumi with Scott Lowe

Episode Overview  

In this season premiere, Steinn and Urs are joined by Scott Lowe — currently at Cisco via the Isovalent acquisition, and formerly on Pulumi’s DevRel team for 2.5 years — to break down Pulumi as an infrastructure-as-code tool and where it fits in the network automation landscape.

Episode Guest  

• Scott Lowe: Engineer at Cisco (via Isovalent acquisition), former Pulumi DevRel. Scott discovered Pulumi around 2018–2019 as a frustrated Terraform user, joined the company, and remains an active user today after departing on good terms.
  • Blog: blog.scottlowe.org
  • X/Twitter: @scott_lowe
  • Mastodon: @[email protected]
  • Bluesky: scottslowe.bsky.social

Listen to the show on YouTube:  

Listen to the show anywhere:  

• YouTube: @networkautomagic
• Spotify: Network AutoMagic
• Apple Podcasts: Network AutoMagic
• RSS Feed: Anchor.fm

Show notes resources:  

• Pulumi — Open-source infrastructure-as-code SDK
• Pulumiverse — Community-driven Pulumi providers and components
• Scott Lowe’s Blog

What we cover:  

Scott’s Journey to Pulumi  

From Terraform Frustration to IaC in Real Languages  

• HCL Pain Points: Readability problems, lack of proper control flow, difficulty reasoning about community Terraform modules
• Discovery: Found Pulumi around 2018–2019
• Language Journey: Started with TypeScript, moved to Golang to support Kubernetes open source work
• Joined the Company: Spent 2.5 years on Pulumi’s DevRel team, departed on good terms, remains an active user

What Pulumi Actually Is  

Under the Hood  

• Open-Source Core: A CLI plus multi-language SDKs (Python, TypeScript, Go, C#, Java)
• Real Programming Languages: Write infrastructure-as-code in a language you already know — with loops, conditionals, functions, and testing
• Terraform Provider Bridging: Pulumi cleverly bridges existing Terraform providers, giving access to a massive ecosystem
• Open Source vs. Paid: The CLI and SDKs are open source; Pulumi Cloud is the paid SaaS offering for state management, secrets, and collaboration

Company State  

• Honest Assessment: Discussion of slowing growth metrics, opaque financials
• AI Pivot: Recent pivot toward an AI product called “Neo”

The IaC Competitive Landscape  

Where the Tools Stand  

• Terraform: No longer open source (BSL license change)
• OpenTofu: Community fork maintaining open-source Terraform
• AWS CloudFormation / CDK: AWS-native IaC
• Azure Bicep: Azure-native IaC
• Crossplane: Kubernetes-native infrastructure management
• Ansible: Awkward fit for IaC — better suited for configuration management than infrastructure provisioning

Why Network Automation Is Fundamentally Harder  

Scott’s Three-Tier Argument  

• Tightly Hardware-Coupled OSes: Network operating systems are tied to specific hardware platforms in ways cloud and server automation never faces
• Wildly Inconsistent APIs: APIs vary dramatically across vendors and even across versions of the same vendor’s products
• Poor Standards Implementations: Vendors implement standards inconsistently, creating a fragmentation tax on the entire community

Mixing Imperative and Declarative Approaches  

The Idempotency Trap  

• Pulumi’s Guarantee: State tracking only covers operations through its providers
• Imperative Libraries: Mixing in NAPALM, Netmiko, or other imperative Python libraries becomes the programmer’s responsibility
• Key Distinction: Pulumi is declarative — it manages desired state; bolting on imperative code breaks that contract

Advanced Pulumi Concepts  

• Rollback Behavior: How Pulumi handles failures and state rollback
• Circular Dependencies: Pitfalls when resources depend on each other
• Automation API: Programmatic orchestration — embed Pulumi in your own applications and workflows
• Provider Quality: Real-world pain of inconsistent provider quality across network vendors

Advice for Network Engineers  

Getting Started  

• Learn a Programming Language: Python as a force multiplier — it unlocks not just Pulumi but the entire automation ecosystem

Scott’s Controversial Opinion  

• Look Beyond Switches and Routers: Network engineers who insist they only care about devices up to the server boundary are being shortsighted
• The Borders Are Collapsing: Networking extends into Kubernetes, hypervisors, and cloud-native workloads
• Career Growth: Understanding the full stack makes you more valuable and more effective

Key Takeaways  

1. Real Languages > DSLs: Writing IaC in Python, Go, or TypeScript gives you the full power of a programming language — testing, abstractions, package management
2. Pulumi Bridges Terraform: You don’t lose the Terraform provider ecosystem by switching to Pulumi
3. Network Automation Is Hard: Hardware coupling, API inconsistency, and poor standards create unique challenges that cloud IaC tools don’t solve out of the box
4. Declarative vs. Imperative Matters: Mixing paradigms requires careful thought about state management and idempotency
5. Learn to Code: Python is the single best investment a network engineer can make
6. Expand Your Horizons: The network doesn’t stop at the switch port — Kubernetes, cloud, and virtualization are all part of the modern network engineer’s domain