Blog
Top Skills To Look for In A DevOps Engineer
Amazon, Adobe, Facebook, Netflix, HP, Etsy, and many more organizations globally, apart from being industry giants, have one thing in common, DevOps. In fact, as per the research by Global Market Insights, the DevOps market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 20% between 2020 and 2026.
But do you know what is DevOps?
Why are more and more organizations implementing DevOps?
What are the skills to look for while hiring a DevOps engineer?
In this article, we will be answering all these questions.
Table of Contents
What is DevOps?
The term ‘DevOps‘ was coined in 2009 by one of its pioneers, Patrick Debois. DevOps, as the name suggests, is a combination of two words, “development” and “operations“.
Gartner defines DevOps as more than using tools or coding expertise. It is a culture of adopting lean and agile practices through a system-oriented approach. Using automation tools, the DevOps approach improves collaboration between the development and operation teams so that they work cohesively across the entire application lifecycle.
Also read: Top Ten Global PHP Website Examples
More and more organizations are ready to spend for having their own DevOps team.
Here are some of the reasons why:
- Improves collaboration among teams
- Faster time to market
- Better Customer Satisfaction
- Results in greater efficiency
- Enhanced security
What are the skills to look for in a candidate?
While having programming knowledge is essential for any DevOps developer, there are some additional skills which they must have:
- Coding & Scripting skills
- Extensive Knowledge of Cloud Computing
- Strong Understanding of CI & CD pipelines
- Hands-on knowledge of tools
- Soft Skills
- Problem Solver
Also read: 10 Skills That Will Make Your CV Stand Out in 2023
Coding & Scripting Skills
Although a lot of automation is involved in DevOps, excellent knowledge of coding and scripting always makes the job easy.
What is the difference between coding and scripting?
While coding is a way to develop applications or software, scripting is used to automate tasks using a high level construct or an existing program. Some common coding languages are Python, Ruby, and Java. Scripting languages include Perl, Bash, and Python. DevOps engineers use Python as both a coding and a scripting language.
If your organization is using Ansible for deployment and orchestration, then having a Python developer with knowledge of Linux on your team is an add-on bonus. More and more organizations are hosting their applications on Linux OS, which makes it crucial for your team to have an engineer with knowledge of both.
On the other hand, if your organization uses Puppet or Chef, then look for a candidate with the knowledge of Ruby and Linux.
Extensive Knowledge of Cloud Computing
In the present day, everything has moved to the cloud. Most organizations prefer cloud-based infrastructure or services versus physical data centres or servers. It helps organizations save lots of physical space and money and gives them exceptional computing power and storage.
In DevOps, a cloud-based infrastructure helps with:
- Continuous Monitoring
- Maintaining the CI/CD pipeline with automation tools
- Ease of access
- Ensures smoother functioning of the testing, deploying, and code release processes
AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform are some of the common cloud platforms used to host DevOps services. So a DevOps engineer should be able to manage one of these platforms end-to-end or be willing to learn the same.
Also read: 7 Books Every Software Developer Must Read Right Now
Strong understanding of CI and CD pipelines
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI / CD) are crucial parts of the overall DevOps implementation. If you are hiring a fresher for your DevOps team, then they might lack the knowledge.
But if you are hiring someone who is experienced in DevOps practices, they should have a good understanding of building and maintaining pipelines. They should know how to automate the processes of build, testing, deployment, and containerization using scripts.
What is Continuous Integration or CI?
Continuous Integration, or CI is a DevOps practice where all the developers working on a project merge their code into a central repository using tools like Jenkins or Bamboo. Later, automated builds and tests are run on this code. This speeds up the time taken for a new release as issues and bugs are resolved quicker.
What is Continuous Delivery or CD?
Continuous Delivery, or CD is a DevOps practice in which code changes are automatically deployed to production or testing environments post the built stage. It is an extension of continuous integration and ensures that developers always have a tested and ready-to-deploy build.
Hands-on Knowledge of Tools
On a day-to-day basis, a DevOps engineer or a DevOps engineer uses a variety of tools to complete their tasks. DevOps implementation happens in stages, and in each, multiple tools are involved.
If you are planning to hire an experienced DevOps engineer for your team, look for someone with hands-on knowledge of the below tools.
- Monitoring tools, such as Nagios, Splunk, etc.
- Automation tools such as Puppet, Chef, and Ansible
- Containerization tools such as Docker, Vagrant, and Kubernetes
- Continuous integration tools like Jenkins, TeamCity, AWS CodePipeline, Bamboo, CircleCI, etc.
- Source Code Management tools like GitHub, Git, and GitLab
- Testing tools like Selenium
Soft Skills - Collaboration & Communication
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford
In the IT industry, having a grasp of one’s technical skills is crucial, but without good communication and collaboration, it becomes difficult in the long run. For a DevOps engineer, it is no different.
The DevOps engineering team cannot work in silos. They collaborate with the engineering team and multiple stakeholders across the organization. With good communication and collaboration skills, it becomes easier for them to resolve conflicts and issues, align goals, and lead the organization to success.
Here are some popular courses which can help anyone upscale their soft skills:
A Quick Problem Solver
Last but not least, an ideal DevOps engineer should be a quick problem solver. They should be able to debug and troubleshoot issues quickly, identify problems, remove roadblocks if any, and find solutions to potential problems. With continuous monitoring, they should be able to come up with ways to improve system stability and performance.
Can developers be trained to be a DevOps engineer?
Yes, any developer with excellent programming skills can be trained to be a DevOps engineer. The below tips might help a new or an experienced professional to hone their skills as a DevOps engineer:
- Assign a mentor: If you already have an existing DevOps team, then assign someone from the team as a mentor to the new developer. It will help them grasp the concepts faster and get aligned with the business process of the organization at the same time.
- Subscribe to Blogs Or Join a Community: You can request the new member on your DevOps team to subscribe to DevOps related blogs, join communities, or follow influencers from the DevOps community. This will help them stay updated with the latest trends, tools, research, and learn new things.
- Certificates or Courses: Expanding one’s own knowledge is essential to keep up with the trends of the DevOps industry. There are multiple certifications and courses available online on learning platforms such as edX, Coursera, Udemy, etc., where one can learn everything related to DevOps.
Also read: 15 Best Communities That Every Developer Should Join
- Workshops and Networking events: There’s no best way to learn than learning from the experts. You can enrol your new hire to DevOps workshops and DevOps Networking events. This will help them meet and interact with the experts from the DevOps industry and learn directly from them.
If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of DevOps, check out our recent blog post on the topic: Benefits of DevOps.
Conclusion
So, when you are looking for a DevOps engineer for your team, look for someone who is not only exceptional in their technical skills but also someone who is a people person, solution-centric, go-getter, and proactive.
If you are still looking to build your team of DevOps engineers, get in touch with us! We will help you build your team in less than 48 hours with high-quality and pre-vetted developers.
Abhishek Ghosh
