Almost every organization wants to adopt DevOps. The promise of higher software development speed and business agility that roots out from accelerating and streamlining the interaction between operations and development is too mainstream to ignore.
However, the problem is there is no shortcut to reach there. A lot of organizations have gone that path, and approached it as a pure technology play- get a DevOps tool and life will become better. All of those DevOps attempts have been utter failures.
To begin a successful journey to become a DevOps Consulting organization starts with having the right people in the right roles, with the right skills and willingness to collaborate.
Let’s understand who is a DevOps Engineer.
Who is a DevOps Engineer?
DevOps engineer is a person who understands the entire SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) and has the right understanding of various automation tools for building digital pipelines (Continuous Integration/ Continuous Deployment).
They work with developers and the IT team to oversee the release of code. They can be either developers who are interested in network operations and deployment, or are SysAdmins with a passion for coding, scripting and move into the deployment side where they can improve the planning of tests and deployment.
Let’s look into the various DevOps job roles.
What are DevOps Job Roles?
Let me list down a few roles along with their description to help you understand better.
- DevOps Evangelist: He is the principal officer or leader. He is responsible for implementing DevOps
- Release Manager: He releases new features & ensures post-release product stability
- Automation Expert: He is responsible for achieving automation & organization of tools
- Software Developer: They develop the code
- Quality Assurance: He ensures the quality of the product is based on its requirement
- Security Engineer: He monitors the product’s security & health
What are The Responsibilities of DevOps Engineers?
A DevOps engineer is responsible for creating and implementing software systems by working with many departments and teams. They need to multitask, deal with various situations at a single time, and exhibit flexibility.
Moreover, a DevOps engineer’s responsibilities include:
- Documentation: Writing specifications and documentation for the server-side functionality.
- Systems analysis: Analyzing the tech being used currently and developing plans, processes for better improvement and expansions. The DevOps engineer offers support for any urgent analytics needs.
- Development: Developing, coding, buildings, installation, configurations, and maintaining IT solutions.
- Project planning: Participating in project planning meetings to share their point of view of system options, impact, risk, and costs vs. benefits. Plus, DevOps engineers communicate current operational requirements and development predictions.
- Testing: Testing various codes, processes, and deployments to figure out methods to streamline and reduce errors.
- Deployment: Using configuration management software to deploy updates and fixes automatically into the production environment.
- Maintenance and troubleshooting: Performing routine application maintenance to ensure the production environment runs hassle-free. They also develop maintenance procedures and requirements.
- Performance management: Recommending performance enhancements by executing gap analysis, connecting alternative solutions, and assisting with changes.
- Management: Depending on the size of the organization, the DevOps engineer might also be responsible for managing a complete team of DevOps engineers.
Now that we know who is a DevOps engineer, what are their roles and responsibilities, let’s have a look at what does it take to become a successful DevOps Engineer.
What Skill Sets does a DevOps Engineer Need?
There is no set career path to define the role of a DevOps engineer. However, there are few skills that you need to develop for making it your career.
- Communication: As a DevOps engineer, you need to work with a lot of different people in different teams. Thus, having good verbal and written communication skills is very important. If you do not like working with different people or if you don’t communicate very well, then you need to think of another job for you.
- Problem-solving and troubleshooting: A DevOps personnel need to be able to quickly recognize problems and bottlenecks in everyday processes. They also suggest improvements and execute fixes as required to ensure processes meet expectations.
- Software development: An engineer needs to have experience in building software apps and a good knowledge of scripting languages such as Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Perl, Python, Groovy, Bash, PHP, and so on.
- Process-oriented: They need to have the ability to focus on processes,rather than focus on just results and underlying causes. The engineers try to understand a problem before trying to fix it.
- Documentation: All the processes need to be clearly documented so that knowledge is passed on to another member of the team smoothly.
- Agile experience: Having an understanding of, or an experience in the agile software development environment will help you being a DevOps engineer.
- Product/project management: A DevOps engineer requires experience in leading a development project and leading schedules.
- IT best practices: You need to have some experience with, or a good understanding of, IT best practices in this job.
- Deployment/configuration management: You need to have experience with managing deployments and integrations using configuration management tools like Jira, Git, GitLab, or Jenkins.
- Operating system platforms: Having knowledge on Windows and Linux operating system environments is an added benefit.
There are a lot of opportunities in case you are looking for a job in DevOps space. But first, make sure you are ready and have good understanding, experience regarding Automation, Quality Assurance, Deployments, Testing Automation, and Version Control. This space needs to evolve and grow, therefore, there will be ample opportunities for you to find the kind of DevOps job you need today and tomorrow.
