DevOps Engineer: What Does One Do and How Do You Become One?
A DevOps engineer is a professional who needs to understand the methodologies and tools used to develop, deploy, and operate high-quality software.
A DevOps engineer is a professional who needs to understand the methodologies and tools used to develop, deploy, and operate high-quality software.
He or she aims to balance needs throughout the software development life cycle, from coding and deployment, to maintenance and updates.
Today, DevOps is one of the top most-wanted technology roles that the US IT industry is looking for, so let’s look closer at what a DevOps engineer does, their role and responsibilities within an organization, the salary range for the job in the US, and the most popular DevOps engineer skills.
What does a DevOps Engineer do?
The DevOps engineer role has a wide impact and provides deep value, so it’s helpful to think about its three main guiding principles: 1) empower the exchange of information shared thought processes, 2) shorten and amplify feedback loops, and 3) create a culture that fosters continual experimentation and learning.
More concretely, the DevOps engineer’s goal is to improve multiple facets of the software development life cycle (SDLC) process using a mix of practices, tools, and technologies.
They often function in a situation where developers, system administrators, and programmers are all working on the same product but not necessarily sharing information. DevOps engineers can help in reducing this communication gap by blending the skills of a business analyst with the technical chops to build the solution—plus they know the business well, and can look at how any issue affects the entire company.
How to become a DevOps Engineer
The first step on your journey to becoming a DevOps Engineer is learning about the concepts source control, continuous integration, and continuous delivery as well as the technologies and tools that surround them. These provide a good base for the day-to-day technical tasks involved in DevOps.
Cloud Academy offers a range of hands-on training and labs that will allow you to deploy your own cloud environments in real time using a variety of DevOps principles.
It’s also a good idea to steer your through the basics of Agile. This will allow you to see the frameworks and process of the this development methodology and how it is used in modern organizations. You’ll be able to adapt to change, make your processes more efficient, and respond to customer needs by adopting an Agile approach in operations.
GitOps is another concept also worth learning. While code automation has had much written about and implemented, infrastructure automation is newer so it bears a deep size. Familiarizing yourself with GitOps enables benefits such as allowing you to automate Kubernetes deployments, saving you time and effort.
Once you put together these skills, you’ll be able to jump into the exciting part: building and deploying your cloud-native app with a stack containing tech like React, Go, Docker, and Kubernetes.
Role and responsibilities
The role of a DevOps engineer differs from one company to another, but it generally involves a mix of release engineering, infrastructure management, and system administration.
DevOps Engineers are responsible for analyzing the elements and functions of the cloud environment, and writing code to scale them to meet a particular need. This could involve adding users to a cloud infrastructure, adding permissions, changing processes, or other tasks expected to meet business prerequisites.
This type of work requires fast fire coding or the capacity to write small pieces of code in various languages. This also implies that DevOps experts need to be proficient in testing in virtual environments.
DevOps Engineer Salary: How Much Does a DevOps Engineer Make in the US?
According to 2021 research, the average salary for a DevOps Engineer in the United States is around $120,000 that, with additional cash compensation, can reach a total $140,000 for an experienced engineer.
The base salary range is usually between $105,000 and $135,000 but it can vary depending on many critical factors, including education, certifications, soft and hard skills, and years of experience.
Becoming a DevOps Engineer: resources
Getting started with DevOps
This selection of content will help you take your first steps into DevOps. It will provide information about the tools and methodologies used to create, deploy, and maintain high-quality software. This is the best place to start if you are new to DevOps.
DevOps Tools & Services
A cohesive team and a solid understanding of the tools, best practice, and processes needed to create and deliver software and services at large scale is key to successful DevOps implementation.
This collection of content will assist you in doing just that.
Agile Methodology
Are you thinking about using Scrum in your software development? This selection of content will give you a complete understanding of the Agile approach to working.
DevOps Certifications
You can prove your DevOps expertise by becoming certified. These learning paths will prepare you for many DevOps-based certifications. These learning paths are very comprehensive and will help you pass your certification exams.
- DevOps Foundations – DevOps Institute Certification Exam Preparation
- DevOps Engineer – Professional Certification Preparation for AWS
- AZ-400 Exam Prep: Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions
- Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Exam Preparation
DevOps on AWS
This collection of content will help you implement DevOps practices when working specifically in AWS. Find out more about AWS’s DevOps Services and how to use them to improve your workflow.
- Operations on AWS
- AWS Developer Services for CI/CD
- AWS CloudFormation: Introduction to Infrastructure as Code
DevOps on Microsoft Azure
Learn how to use DevOps to develop and deploy applications on Azure. This collection of content will provide you with the knowledge and skills to implement DevOps processes when developing and deploying applications on Azure.
- The Infrastructure Developer’s Guide to Terraform: Azure Edition
- Organizing Code Using Azure Repos in Azure DevOps
- Deploy a Virtual Machine with Terraform Challenge
DevOps Hands on Labs
You can put your knowledge into practice with our guided labs.
- Organizing Code Using Azure Repos in Azure DevOps
- Exposing Applications Using Kubernetes Ingress Rules
- Using Kubernetes Primitives to Implement Common Deployment Strategies
What Skills Does a DevOps Engineer Need?
DevOps is about delivering highly valuable business features in very short periods through cross-team collaboration. In order to succeed, DevOps engineers need to have soft interpersonal, tooling, and technical skills.
Let’s dig into what are the most important skills for DevOps success.
Communication & collaboration
Communication and collaboration are essential to success in DevOps. These are essential for breaking down barriers between DevOps and Development teams, aligning their goals with business objectives, and implementing DevOps culture transversely.
Coding
DevOps engineers should have programming and coding skills. Python, PHP, Javascript, Bash, Node.js and Java are among the most recommended coding languages to have at least a basic understanding of.
Automation
DevOps automation skills are closely tied to knowledge about DevOps toolset and programming. To be successful in DevOps, fluency in automation is a must as it is the core of DevOps. DevOps engineers should be able to automate the entire process, including CI/CD cycles and app performance monitoring, infrastructure, configurations, and other tasks.
Speed
Faster iterations mean businesses may quickly adapt to changing market conditions, faster business hypothesis validation, and faster recovery from outages. And businesses that ship software faster are more likely to succeed in the marketplace.
Thus, it is in the companies’ best interest to accelerate their software delivery value stream and DevOps engineers must be able to reach this goal.
Security
DevOps helps speed deployment and reduce the risk rate. This constraint might mean that security should be implemented at the end, or as an independent process within the traditional process. DevSecOps is able to integrate security with the SDLC from the beginning. DevSecOps skills will be a huge advantage in your DevOps career.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What does a DevOps engineer do?
The DevOps engineer role has a wide impact and provides deep value, so it’s helpful to think about its three main guiding principles: 1) empower the exchange of information shared thought processes, 2) shorten and amplify feedback loops, and 3) create a culture that fosters continual experimentation and learning.
What skills does a DevOps engineer need?
DevOps is about delivering highly valuable business features in very short periods through cross-team collaboration. In order to succeed, DevOps engineers need to have soft interpersonal, tooling, and technical skills.
What is DevOps Engineer salary?
According to 2021 research, the average salary for a DevOps Engineer in the United States is around $120,000 that, with additional cash compensation, can reach a total $140,000 for an experienced engineer.
