Top 10+ DevOps Engineer Skills to Excel in Your Career

With DevOps becoming increasingly popular, the number of companies investing in DevOps has also increased substantially. A large number of users are using DevOps tools like Chef, Docker, and Puppet. With this increasing popularity, the demand for qualified DevOps Engineers has also increased. Thus, now is the best time for you to acquire DevOps Engineer skills if you are eyeing a lucrative career in this domain.

Table of content

• DevOps Engineer Skills Companies Look for in a Candidate
  • Linux Fundamentals and Scripting Skills
  • Security Skills
  • Automation Skills
  • Coding and Scripting
  • Cloud Skills
  • Testing Skills
  • Configuration and Version Management
  • Learning Proactive Monitoring
  • Communication and Collaboration
  • Soft Skills and Noble Thought
• Understanding of Relevant Tools
• Conclusion

DevOps Engineer Skills Companies Look for in a Candidate

Lots of businesses are implementing DevOps culture and practices. This will make it important for their competitors to instill similar practices as well. This should push the demand even more for DevOps moving forward.

There is in fact much opportunity in the DevOps culture within organizations, and it seems that the tendency will remain over time. There seem to be plenty of jobs in the market, but at the same time, there is a decline in the average wages paid. This encourages an aspiring DevOps Engineer to acquire a wide variety of skills.

1. Linux Fundamentals and Scripting Skills

When you have acquired Linux fundamentals, it means you have acquired skills such as file handling, text processing, system administration, process management, and networking.

Nevertheless, acquiring basic knowledge of Linux encompasses only a single pillar of systems administration/engineering. Additionally, it is advisable to know how to handle Linux servers, configure active monitoring of infrastructure/software, and operate web servers/DNS servers. You should have knowledge of load balancers such as Apache, Nginx and also TCP/IP networking, IP gateways, etc.

It is advisable to possess a good amount of experience working as an operations person and only then should you look at the various approaches and principles surrounding DevOps. This even helps them to think outside the box when it comes to enhancing their career by transitioning to the role of a DevOps Engineer.

So having good scripting skills is one of the vital skill sets of a DevOps engineer. This is a prerequisite to taking up the DevOps role as one should be competent in using at least one scripting language, for example, Shell, Python, etc. If you are a person with basic programming understanding, you would be able to write scripts that would automate the entire build, test, and monitor processes in the frameworks and the applications, which in turn, would make you more productive in your role as a DevOps Engineer. Visibly, if you do not have enough experience in programming or computers in general, you would like to focus more on operations rather than development.

Needless to say, Python is gaining its place in the software development space as a general-purpose language. Python has been seen to be growing rapidly and even getting more recognition as the second most popular programming language according to GitHub. Stack Overflow also mentioned that Python language is overly aggressive in its growth within the programming frontier. To top it all off, Python is among the most sought languages when it comes to Machine Learning. This only goes to strengthen the fact that indeed Python is the hottest skill in the job market and that’s why the industry feels the need to have more and more professionals with certification in it.

The question still stands: what exactly can Python do for DevOps? Python has been noticed to minimize a variety of issues concerning the maintenance of systems during the deployment and the monitoring stage which are crucial in DevOps.

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2. Security Skills

The risk rates are mostly proportional to the speed of deployment that DevOps facilitates. Due to this constraint, traditional security measures at the end or as a separate process might not work. This is where DevSecOps serves as an advantage by integrating security with SDLC right from the beginning. So, the DevOps skill set will definitely help towards having a successful DevOps career.

3. Automation Skills

Being called a DevOps engineer calls for a good command over automation, which is the heart of DevOps processes. A DevOps engineer should know how to automate an entire DevOps pipeline, including CI/CD cycles, infrastructure and configurations, app performance monitoring, and more. This skill set is closely linked to the knowledge of DevOps tools, coding, and scripting.

4. Coding and Scripting

The two other important skill sets that a DevOps engineer should possess are coding and scripting. Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, Node.js, Shell, and Bash are among the most recommended programming/scripting languages in this career.

5. Cloud Skills

Cloud and DevOps go hand in hand. The efficiency of one is directly dependent on the other. Moving to the cloud became necessary for the smoother functioning of continuous monitoring. The DevOps methodology that drives a process, is enabled by the cloud through the essential platform that enables testing, deployment, and code releases.

Cloud enables DevOps automation with the help of the required CI/CD tools. It also drives a resource monitoring mechanism.

Learning about common cloud providers and their resources is vital for any DevOps Engineer. You have to learn about various cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, and GCP) and Cloud Computing skills that can deploy upgrades and fixes.

Furthermore, you need to gain insights into how to integrate DevOps with the cloud, which is, in fact, one of the most desirable technological combinations in the world today. Consider this as an extra skill to learn along with all the other DevOps Engineer skills.

6. Testing Skills

Testing is crucial for a successful DevOps operation. DevOps automation pipeline requires tests that are executed without fail. This is crucial for the success of continuous testing, where automated tests are performed, which in turn, make the process quicker ensuring quality delivery to the end user.

You must have a good understanding of how tools like Chef, Puppet, etc. work. You can utilize Docker containers with the same intent of packing up an application with all the required components, like libraries and dependencies. Thus, Docker helps ship it all out as one package to the Ops guy.

You also need to learn how to integrate Jenkins with automation testing tools like Selenium (which is known as Continuous Delivery). Hence, this skill is one of the most crucial DevOps Engineer skills.

7. Configuration and Version Management

The continuous integration tool, Jenkins existed for a prolonged time prior to DevOps growing so popular. This tool gave huge success to the operations team by allowing for a steady build with the help of its automation feature.

Hence, you must learn to automate the code-building process and push the recent commit to a specific central repository. Basically, you have to know how Jenkins, the automation server, works. You must additionally know how to merge/combine build tools such as Maven with version control systems tools like Git and make them work. Thus, creating Continuous Integration pipelines is one of the most desired DevOps Engineer skills.

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8. Learning Proactive Monitoring

Continuous Monitoring tools track logs, and recognize possible bottlenecks in the production system, upgrade system versions, and pave security patches if any. This is done by sending feedback to the developer side to execute the changes. You must find out how to work with these monitoring tools, including Nagios, Splunk, etc.

9. Communication and Collaboration

Given its basic nature, communication and collaboration are two very important aspects that break down the silos between Dev and Ops teams. It aligns both the teams’ goals with the business objectives and implements DevOps culture cross-functionally.

10. Soft Skills and Noble Thought

Apart from all the other skills, DevOps needs soft skills, flexibility, self-motivation, and learning. DevOps professionals are expected to be the doers as well as listeners. DevOps transformation involves stakeholder discussions, assessment, identification of improvement areas, and awareness about business goals, which are all driven by collaboration.

Understanding of Relevant Tools

DevOps success purely depends on the toolset it involves during different phases of its implementation. It’s hard to even count the number of tools that DevOps brought in. However, the significance of making DevOps successful is something to be discussed in detail.

DevOps engineers need to know how to use the following types of tools:

1. Network protocols:

HTTP/HTTPS, SSH, FTP/SFTP, SMTP, TCP/IP, AMQP, MQTT etc.

2. Version control:

Git, SVN, Mercurial, Bazaar, etc.

3. Continuous Integration servers:

Jenkins, TeamCity, Bamboo, GitLab CI, etc.

4. Configuration management:

Ansible, Puppet, Chef, SaltStack, etc.

5. Deployment automation:

Jenkins, Octopus Deploy, GitLab CI/CD, Bamboo, etc.

6. Containers:

Docker, Kubernetes, Podman, Containerd, Docker Swarm, etc.

7. Infrastructure Orchestration:

Terraform, Ansible, Apache Mesos etc.

8. Testing and Cloud Quality tools:

Testing Tools:

• Selenium – For automated web testing.
• JMeter – For performance and load testing.
• Postman – For API testing.
• TestRail – For test case management.

Cloud Quality Tools:

• SonarQube – For continuous code quality inspection.
• BlazeMeter – For cloud-based performance testing.
• BrowserStack – For cross-browser testing on real devices.
• Qualys – For cloud security and compliance monitoring.

Conclusion

After a lot of research, the above-listed skills are the key skills that companies look for in a DevOps Engineer. The list might look pretty lengthy and exhausting, but in reality, it is not. As you begin achieving expertise in the above-mentioned DevOps Engineer skills (such as various tools, frameworks, languages, etc.), you’ll gradually gain more knowledge of what is going on in the DevOps space. This knowledge will help you start your career as a DevOps Engineer, but you must not forget ‘no efforts, no results!’

Now, if you are wondering where to start, check out our well-structured online Cloud and DevOps Program, which will help you create industry-related projects based on AWS, Microsoft Azure, DevOps, Python, Java, Splunk, Linux, and more. Since this certification adds value to your resume and also acts as a solid authentication of your skills during your DevOps Engineer interview, consider enrolling in our course today!

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