Naveen Babu Narayanan Nair

I lead software development & engineering at Comcast, write research papers and publish open-source tools.

I'm Naveen Babu Narayanan Nair, based in Philadelphia. I build engineering teams, write papers, publish open tools and speak at conferences.

Leadership

Leading engineering teams through scale.

Senior Director, Software Development & Engineering

Comcast, Philadelphia. October 2024 to present.

I lead the engineering organization that builds the platforms and tools behind the RDK device software lifecycle, from release readiness and deployment to monitoring and field triage.

The work spans an agentic AI test automation platform, a global device farm with labs in the US, UK and India, and a multi-tenant device management platform for RDK operators.

How the scope grew

  1. Project LeaderADA Software Group
  2. Technical SpecialistTata Elxsi
  3. Senior ManagerComcast
  4. DirectorComcast
  5. Senior DirectorComcast

Research

Three lines of inquiry.

Each one starts from a practical problem and asks what changes when software agents take part in the loop.

Agentic Predictive Network Operations

Agents that read network telemetry, forecast faults and degradations, and act, or recommend action, before customers notice. The open question is how much autonomy to grant while operators stay in control.

In everyday terms

A car warns you the brake pads are thin weeks before they fail, and books the garage. The network does the same with its own signals.

  1. Watch the signals
  2. Predict a fault
  3. Act early

Agentic Traffic

Treats traffic generated by AI agents as its own class of network workload, and asks how it can be identified, measured and verified so that networks can plan for it and operators can trust it.

In everyday terms

Delivery robots join a busy sidewalk. Planners need to know which travellers are robots, how many there are, and whether they follow the rules.

  1. Identify agent traffic
  2. Measure it
  3. Verify it behaves

AI for Software Test

Learning-based analytics that recommend and prioritise tests and audit coverage and decisions, so very large test suites stay fast, explainable and trustworthy as the software changes.

In everyday terms

A doctor with one hour decides which tests to order first based on the symptoms, and writes down why. Test suites face the same squeeze.

  1. Rank the tests
  2. Run likely failures first
  3. Record why

Publications

Loaded from my ORCID record, newest first.

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Open source

Tools other people can use.

Tracedown

A Python SDK that traces AI agent runs, finds the step that led to a wrong answer and lets you replay the run with a fix.

View on GitHub

Research Paper Toolkit

Skills and prompts for drafting, checking and reviewing papers in IEEE, ACM, Springer, Elsevier and NeurIPS-style formats. It also includes a plain-prompt pack for researchers who use other AI assistants.

View on GitHub

proctor

The exam proctor for AI coding agents. It checks for cheating such as skipped failing tests or hard-coded outputs, and runs the code against hidden tests the agent never saw.

View on GitHub

    Speaking

    Talks and panels.

    1. 2024

      RDK Technology Summit, Amsterdam

      Speaker

      Presented AUTOMATICS, an open-source test automation framework and orchestration system adopted by Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Vantiva.

    2. 2023

      RDK Technology Summit, Bonn

      Panelist

      Community Test Collaboration: how RDK members can share testing effort and results.

    Invite me to speak.

    I enjoy conferences, meetups and university talks. These are the topics I can bring.

    Send an invitation
    • Agentic AI for test automationWhere agents genuinely help validation, and where humans stay in the loop.
    • Open collaboration on testingWhat the RDK community learned from sharing tools and results.
    • Building and open-sourcing automation frameworksFrom internal tool to community project.
    • AI-assisted research writingUsing structured prompts to draft and review IEEE and ACM papers.

    Speaker kit

    Everything an organizer needs for a programme or introduction.

    Short bio (about 50 words)

    Naveen Babu Narayanan Nair is Senior Director of Software Development & Engineering at Comcast, where he leads engineering for RDK device software operations. He researches agentic AI for network operations and software test, builds open-source tools, and is an ACM Certified Reviewer. He has spoken at the RDK Technology Summit in Amsterdam and Bonn.

    Long bio (about 150 words)

    Naveen Babu Narayanan Nair is Senior Director of Software Development & Engineering at Comcast in Philadelphia, where he leads the engineering organization behind RDK device software operations, from release readiness and deployment to monitoring and field triage. Over more than twenty years he has built test automation and developer tooling for large device ecosystems, including AUTOMATICS, a test automation framework and orchestration system that was open-sourced to the RDK community and adopted by Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Vantiva. He researches agentic AI for network operations and software test, and he publishes open-source tools for researchers. Naveen presented at the RDK Technology Summit in Amsterdam in 2024 and joined a panel on community test collaboration in Bonn in 2023. He is an ACM Certified Reviewer, mentors early-stage founders with Kerala Startup Mission, and holds a Master of Computer Applications from Visvesvaraya Technological University.

    About

    An engineer who followed the question into research.

    For over twenty years I've built test automation and developer tooling for large device ecosystems. One question kept coming back: how can a complex system notice its own problems and explain them?

    Today that question takes the form of agentic AI, applied to network operations and software test. I publish what I can, open-source what I can, and take the ideas to the RDK community, where operators share testing tools and results.

    I'm an ACM Certified Reviewer and mentor early-stage founders with Kerala Startup Mission. I grew up in Kerala and now live in Philadelphia.

    Skills and tools

    What I research

    • Agentic AI
    • LLM agents
    • Predictive operations
    • Traffic verification
    • Test prioritisation

    What I build with

    • Java
    • Test automation frameworks
    • CI/CD
    • Shift-left testing
    • Model-driven architecture
    • GitHub

    How I work with people

    • Open-source collaboration
    • Peer review
    • Conference speaking
    • Mentoring
    • Agile and DevOps

    Contact

    Let's talk about agents, networks and test.

    For speaking invitations, research collaboration, mentoring questions or code reviews, write to me directly or use the form.

    Send a message

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