DevOps is one of the top most-wanted technology roles that the US IT industry is looking for! The need for DevOps skills is increasing. DevOps is like a bridge that connects software development and operations teams. It breaks down barriers between these departments and speeds up how quickly software is created and implemented. This is a significant advantage for businesses at all levels, and it has made DevOps professionals and service providers highly sought after. In fact, among companies that heavily rely on digital technology, a “DevOps engineer” is the most in-demand IT job.
What is DevOps engineer? What does a DevOps engineer do?
That is the question that an aspiring DevOps engineer has. DevOps is not a technology but more of a production methodology. Drawing cues from the agile, DevOps developers bring together swift development speeds and automation capabilities.
DevOps transcends the limitations of the traditional waterfall model. It involves various development, testing, and deployment technologies to establish automated CI/CD pipelines. Below are some well-known DevOps tools:
- Git and GitHub: Source code management (Version Control System).
- Jenkins: An automation server equipped with plugins for constructing CI/CD pipelines.
- Selenium: Automation testing.
- Docker: A platform for software containerization.
- Kubernetes: A tool for container orchestration.
- Puppet: Used for configuration management and deployment.
- Chef: Also employed for configuration management and deployment.
- Ansible: Another tool for configuration management and deployment.
- Nagios: Utilized for continuous monitoring.
Top 10 Skills for DevOps Engineer Professionals
1) Communication and Collaboration
Given its basic nature, communication and collaboration are crucial to succeed in DevOps competition. These two are very important to break down the siloes between Dev and Ops teams, align teams’ goals to business objectives, and implement DevOps culture cross-functionally.
2) Soft Skills and Noble Thought
It’s not enough if you are just good at coding and automation. DevOps skills needs a different you who is also good at soft skills, self-motivation, flexibility, and learning. DevOps professionals should be the doers as well as listeners.
They should be clear that DevOps transformation involves stakeholder discussions, awareness about business goals, assessment, and identification of improvement areas, all driven by collaboration.
3) Understanding of Relevant Tools
DevOps success purely depends on the toolset it involves during different phases of its implementation. It’s hard even to count the number of tools DevOps brought in. However, the significance of making DevOps practices successful should be discussed in detail.
4) Security Skills
The rate of risks often matches the speed of deployment that DevOps facilitates. Given this constraint, security at the end or as a separate process in the traditional method might not work. This is where DevSecOps is an advantage in integrating security with SDLC right from the start.
So, DevSecOps skillset will be an added advantage to success as a DevOps professional.
5) Automation Skills
Being called a DevOps engineer will require a good command over automation, the heart of the DevOps skills process. A DevOps engineer should be capable of automating the entire DevOps pipeline, including CI/CD cycles, app performance monitoring, infrastructure, and configurations.
DevOps automation skillset is closely linked to ability in knowledge about DevOps toolset, coding and scripting.
Despite the varied nature of DevOps roles, specific skills, and attributes stand out as crucial for prospective job candidates to emphasize in their pursuit of employment. These include:
- A solid background in OS administration, spanning platforms such as Linux and Windows.
- Proficiency with various automation and configuration management tools, encompassing traditional scripts and specialized tools like Puppet and Chef.
- A comprehensive grasp of coding and scripting in common languages, including Python, Perl, PHP, and Ruby.
- Familiarity with at least one primary coding language, like C++ or Java.
- The ability to identify, evaluate, and integrate diverse open-source technologies and cloud services.
- A robust foundation in IT hardware and operations, featuring hands-on experience in server, storage, and network device setup, provisioning, and monitoring. This is typically complemented by knowledge of IT best DevOps practices for fault tolerance and high availability operations.
- Strong interpersonal and collaborative skills within a team environment and in customer-facing scenarios.
- Expertise in virtualization technologies like VMware vSphere for virtual machines (VMs) and proficiency with container technologies like Docker and Kubernetes.
- Proven experience with CI/CD tools like Red Hat Ansible, Prometheus, Microsoft GitHub, Atlassian Jira, Confluence, and Jenkins.
- Practical familiarity with public cloud resources and services, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
- Familiarity with various IT monitoring and management tools like Cloudflare and Datadog.
- Proficiency in troubleshooting and resolving technical issues across test and production environments.
More than a technology solution, DevOps emerged as the common buzz word for the IT industry
6) Coding and Scripting
Coding and scripting are two important skillset that DevOps engineer should possess. Python, Ruby, Python, Java, Javascript, PHP, Bash, Shell and Node.js are among the most recommended programming/scripting languages.
Linux is one of the operating environments that hardcore developers continue to use even to this day. There is plenty of freedom to operate around, and this flexibility is favorable to DevOps engineers globally. So, while every DevOps developer doesn’t always rope in Linux, it shall undoubtedly be used by every DevOps engineer at some point in their career.
Learning the fundamentals of Linux, such as connecting to a server and creating and editing files, is not difficult. This qualifies as common knowledge. However, it may take years to become an expert DevOps engineer. While it is not a strictly required skill, large organizations frequently remain with well-known, well-established Linux distributions, typically because they want to support and because the programs they wish to employ are only approved for usage on these well-known distributors. Various courses are available on the web, typically from Red Hat. One can enroll in one of them and get cracking with coding and scripting.
7) Cloud Skills
Cloud and DevOps are always together. The efficiency of one is directly dependent on and influenced by the other. While DevOps methodology drives a process, cloud enables that process by providing it with necessary platform to perform test, deploy and release code.
Cloud enables DevOps automation with the required CI/CD toolset and facilitates a resource monitoring mechanism.
8) Testing Skills
Testing stands crucial to DevOps success. DevOps automation pipeline will need tests that run well without fail. This is important for continuous testing, where automated tests are executed. Automated test cases make the process faster and ensures quality delivery to the end-user.
9) Customer-Focused Approach
Customer satisfaction is the end goal of any successful DevOps process. Given this factor, DevOps professionals should ensure every function they perform follows business objectives and delivers value to the end-user.
In the process, they must collaborate with stakeholders, such as developers, testers, project managers, and the organization’s thought leadership, towards a common goal.
10) Proactiveness
DevOps engineers/pros will need proactiveness and passion towards work, which directly reflects performance and productivity. Moreover, staying updated with relevant technologies, new tools, and more is part of your process. Passion and Proactiveness make you a successful DevOps professional.
