DevOps aims at coupling a tighter alignment between IT operations and businesses. This new phenomenon is taking over the corporate boardrooms by storm and bringing in new methodologies and principles to streamline the creation and deployment of software in the new ‘software is eating the world’ era.
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In this blog post, we will delve into the aspects of what it takes to become a DevOps Engineer, what available career opportunities are, and what the scope is for a DevOps Engineer. There is a general belief that DevOps is more about the automation of processes, the deployment of code, and the release of software. But, it is much more than that. In order to be a successful DevOps-certified professional, we need to have both technical and non-technical skills in equal measure.
Who is a DevOps Engineer?
A DevOps Engineer has to manage the IT infrastructure as per the requirement of the supported software code that is dedicated to a hybrid multi-tenant environment. There is a need to have some resources for provisioning and getting the appropriate deployment model and also for validating and monitoring the performance.
When it comes to DevOps, there is a need to have frequent and incremental changes in the code versions so that frequent testing and deployment are possible. It might not be always possible for DevOps Engineers to do the coding from scratch; they anyway need to know about it.
There is a need for DevOps Engineers to connect various elements of coding along with libraries and software development kits and integrate various components of SQL data management or messaging tools for running software releases with the operating system and the production infrastructure.
Understanding the Role of a DevOps Engineer
As said earlier, the DevOps approach to software development requires frequent, incremental changes, and DevOps Engineers rarely code from scratch. However, they must understand the basics of software development languages and be familiar with the development tools used to create a new code or update the existing one.
A DevOps Engineer will work with development staff to tackle the coding and scripting needed to connect elements of the code, such as libraries or software development kits (SDKs), and integrate other components such as SQL data management or messaging tools that are needed to run the software release with operating systems and production infrastructure.
A DevOps Engineer must be able to manage the IT infrastructure as per the supported software code dedicated in multi-tenant or hybrid cloud environments.
There is a need to have a provision for required resources and for getting the appropriate deployment model, validating the release and monitoring performance.
DevOps Engineers could be either the developers who have moved into operations or the system administrators who have moved into the coding domain.
Either way, it is a cross-function DevOps job role that is seeing huge upside in the way software is developed and deployed in mission-critical applications.
Tasks of a DevOps Engineer
- A firm knowledge of various computer programming languages and familiarity with basic concepts of Linux will be helpful. It is good to have knowledge of any one scripting language as well.
- A DevOps Engineer is expected to be working with a variety of open-source tools and technologies for managing source codes.
- Having a thorough knowledge of IT operations and sysadmin roles in order to strategize the entire integration and deployment process is beneficial.
- Expertise in software code testing and deployment will smoothen the journey of a DevOps Engineer.
- They must be deploying various automation tools of DevOps to perfection. He/she is expected to have a thorough knowledge of software development through automation tools.
- A firm grounding in the agile methodology of project management will take DevOps Engineers to a whole new level. The agile methodology helps in continuous iteration of software development and testing.
- Ability to connect to technical and business goals with alacrity should be the foremost aim.
- A DevOps Engineer has to exhibit good communication skills and should be well-versed in working with teams.
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Software today is not created and managed in a conventional way. Nowadays, it is all about open-source technologies and using the already existing pieces of code in order to stitch a computer program that can adhere to our specific needs.
Thus, the role of a DevOps Engineer needs to evolve and adapt to the new shift in the paradigm that is sweeping the world of software development life cycle and beyond.
The software has to meet the stringent requirements of a world where omni-channel digital interface is a must-have, and the code has to be adaptable and able to morph as per the changing needs of business enterprises.
Due to this, the process of testing and deployment is also seeing a sea change in the way it is managed. A DevOps Engineer has to face the challenges of this new world order and be able to deliver in a fast-paced manner.
They have to ensure that the code has changes that are frequent and incremental in nature. Thus, he/she must know about various elements of coding, along with the libraries and software development kit, so as to integrate different components of SQL data management or the messaging tools for software release.
Significant Skills Required by a DevOps Engineer
A System Administrator is supposed to build, manage, and troubleshoot servers on a regular basis. Getting the servers to work right is one of the most important aspects of the job of a DevOps professional.
Next comes automating the key processes in the deployment of the server and the infrastructure.
A DevOps professional should be well-versed with the aspect of virtualization since he/she has to take charge of the entire process of virtualizing servers and other components.
He/she should be able to work in a private or a public cloud set-up with ease and deploy the necessary infrastructure and virtualization.
- Hands-on experience in network and storage
Today, network and storage are part and parcel of any IT organization, and hence the DevOps professional should be able to deploy the acquired knowledge of the IT network and storage concepts.
This comes in handy when there is a need to design solutions that can stand up to the test of scalability, performance, and high availability at all times.
- Knowledge of coding goes a long way
Do you know, coding is one of the few skills that will survive the onslaught of automation that we are seeing all around? So, having a basic knowledge of coding in any of the popular coding languages can go a long way.
It could be having a grasp of Python, Perl, Java, Ruby, or any other language. This way, the DevOps professional can be a better bridge between the development and operations teams.
Everybody knows that today everything is automatized including the server triggering, application installation, configuration, and validation processes. So, there has to be a lot of coding that needs to be just right, and it is the responsibility of the DevOps professional to ensure that everything is working smoothly.
- Soft skills are a must-have
This is also a primary requirement for the DevOps professional in order to be a bridge between the development and operations teams. Since DevOps is more of a cultural shift, there is a need to have right people skills and soft skills in order to get the whole organization move in a well-oiled fashion.
Since for a long time the development and operations teams were at an arm’s-length, the DevOps principles is bringing about a sea change.
- Understanding the automation tools
There are a lot of automation tools and technologies that are being deployed in the DevOps process, and as DevOps professionals, we need to be familiar with these sets of tools and be able to deploy them in the DevOps setup.
Some of the important tools that are being widely deployed include Puppet, Chef, Jenkins, Salt, Ansible, Kubernetes, Docker, Nagios, Cloud Computing and storage platform, and Infrastructure as a Code.
- Security aspects of the IT organization
Security is one of the prime focuses of a DevOps professional. Due to this, a DevOps personnel needs to know about various security measures that are to be taken care of to ensure that the system is safe and sound and running at all times.
There are a lot of automation processes deployed in the IT organizations which the DevOps personnel need to take special care of. DevOps ensures that the security aspect is taken care of and the process of automation, increased visibility, fast updates, and the agile methodology are running in a smooth way.
Testing is one of the most important aspects of the software development and delivery process. So, the DevOps professional needs to understand how testing works in order to make the whole process go in the right direction.
There are a lot of automation tools that are deployed for the process of testing, and the DevOps professional needs to have hands-on experience of working with these tools. DevOps is more about preventing errors rather than finding them.
Now, you know the most important skill set of a DevOps Engineer. But, do you know, DevOps Engineers are among the highest paid professionals in the technology domain?
There is an acute need of professionals with the right set of DevOps skills in the DevOps domain. Today, DevOps has morphed into a very demanding domain with forward-thinking organizations deploying the code up to 30 times more often than their competitors. More than half of these deployments are successfully accomplished across the globe.
DevOps Engineer salary
DevOps is one of the trending topics in the IT industry and it is a high-paying job. salaries depend on the company, country, and experience.
Average Salary based on country and location
- According to LinkedIn, a DevOps engineer in India earns ₹7,00,000 annually.
- According to payscale, a DevOps engineer in the UK earns £42,897 annually.
- According to LinkedIn, a DevOps engineer in the US earns $1,07,000 annually.
- According to payscale, a DevOps engineer in Russia earns ₽1,621,522 annually.
- According to payscale, a DevOps engineer in China earns ¥320,000 annually.
DevOps Engineer Job Description
DevOps engineer has multiple roles and responsibilities in an organization since a person joining a DevOps is expected to be skilled in the following areas of work:
- Deploying, securing and supporting cloud infrastructure solutions to meet application developer requirements
- Working with and designing automation solutions at scale – particularly infrastructure deployment and testing
- Build tools to allow for continuous integration and development
- Configuration management across all our services and the various environments
- Release engineering (Branching, versioning, tagging, source control event hooks)
- Help develop/implement cloud security strategies for the firm
- Application performance monitoring, logging, and testing
- Experience developing and deploying from within, like to relentlessly automate everything and anything at scale.
- Spend time trying to resolve how something works, not stopping with just knowing what it does.
- Build real web applications and back-end systems faster, more reliable, more efficient.
- Build systems that collect, instrument, analyze data and provide insights about the system.
- Working with Systems Administrators to integrate with existing deployments and infrastructure
Therefore it is important to have these skills and these should be present in DevOps Engineer Resume.
- Git and GitHub: Version control system and source code management
- Jenkins: Server automation and developing CI/CD pipelines
- Selenium: Automated testing
- Kubernetes: Container orchestration
- Puppet: Configuration management
- Docker: Software containerization
- Nagios: Continuous monitoring
- Chef: Configuration management
- AWS: Cloud platform integration
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DevOps Engineer Certification
Landing a job as a DevOps engineer is not so difficult if you have the skill required. DevOps is a growing career and is in huge demand in India and abroad. According to LinkedIn, there are more than 3,100 DevOps Engineer job vacancies in India as of May 2021.
Get certified from Intellipaat’s DevOps Engineer course to get hired. Below are some of the DevOps certification paths that you can sign up for:
- Learn and get certified by the DevOps Master course
This DevOps Arc You will work on real-world projects to get hands-on experience in this domain, which will help you become a certified DevOps Architect.
- Docker Certification Training
This Docker certification training will help you learn Docker containerization, running containers, image creation, orchestration, security best practices, and more through hands-on projects and case studies.
- Jenkins Certification Training
This Jenkins certification training helps you learn server automation, continuous integration, build and configuration tools, Jenkins master-slave architecture, different types of plugins, implementing automated testing, and more through hands-on projects and exercises. Enroll now to become a certified Jenkins Engineer (CJE).
- Get certified in Kubernetes
This Kubernetes certification training helps you learn the Kubernetes architecture, its components, dashboard, app deployment on a cluster, Pods, and best security practices, and more through hands-on projects and exercises.
- Git and GitHub Certification Training
This Git and GitHub training course will help you learn software version control and its hosting service. As part of the training, you will master various aspects of Git architecture, working with remote repositories, Git operations, branching and merging, using Git in Eclipse IDE, and more through hands-on projects.
Conclusion
The role of a DevOps Engineer is not just taking care of one task or taking up one responsibility. He has to juggle multiple roles in order to do justice to the position that is assigned to him.
There is a need to have various skill sets like coding, integration, and testing. Responsibilities of the DevOps Engineer also include solving organizational problems and improving the business process.