A good DevOps engineer understands how to work with both software developers and operations to create a smooth and efficient workflow. They also have a strong understanding of continuous automation and how it can be used to improve process efficiency. Additionally, they should be able to troubleshoot issues quickly, and know how to effectively communicate with all stakeholders.
Some DevOps engineers will be involved with the process of automating specific tasks, while others may be responsible for integrating new open source tools and technologies into the workflow. Additionally, they may be responsible for facilitating communication between different teams and departments within a company.
DevOps is not a domain, it’s not a skill set. It’s a culture to reduce task, time, cost and employee resources in day-to-day activities. It’s a culture to reduce the amount of time it takes to do the same task. It’s a culture to reduce the number of people involved in completing a project or task. IT departments should start talking about a DevOps transformation and how it can increase productivity and efficiency at your organization.
So you’ve started talking about DevOps to increase productivity and efficiency. Whether you’re looking to hire your first DevOps Engineer or growing your current DevOps team, here are technical skills you should look for in a DevOps team member.
Candidates should be familiar with the software development lifecycle, particularly agile.
It will assist in grasping the concepts of continuous integration, continuous deployment, and continuous delivery. Patrick Debois is a great resource for DevOps professionals at the intersection of project management and cloud infrastructure.
The following are a list of concepts you should have in your head in order to get started with continuous integration:
- All the developers must be working on a single project.
- There is no master branch. The code is always under development.
Candidates should be comfortable with shell for Linux and batch automations, as well as PowerShell for Windows automations.
Required skills are:
- Linux command line (shell) and scripting knowledge
- PowerShell scripting and automation experience
- Batch Automation tools such as PowerShell, Bash, or Python scripts.
- Bash shell scripting and automation experience (Linux or Windows).
To be a successful DevOps Engineer candidates must be familiar with source code management tools such as GIT and/or SVN.
Generally, all version control systems perform the following:
- Provide a mechanism to keep track of file changes.
- Allow multiple team members to work on the same file simultaneously.
- Provides UI- or web-based interfaces for developers to visually see the differences between the two versions of the same file.
- Provides a technique to resolve conflicts when the same line in a file is changed by multiple members of the team.
Jenkins, CircleCI, Bamboo, and TeamCity are examples of CI (Continuous Integration) tools that a great DevOps Engineer should be familiar with.
Continuous integration (CI) is the practice of automating the integration of code changes from multiple contributors into a single software project. It’s a primary DevOps best practice, allowing developers to frequently merge code changes into a central repository where builds and tests then run. Automated tools are used to assert the new code’s correctness before integration.
A source code version control system is the crux of the CI process. The version control system is also supplemented with other checks like automated code quality tests, syntax style review tools, and more.
Candidates should be proficient in at least one or two cloud technologies, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or OpenStack.
Cloud computing technology gives users access to storage, files, software, and servers through their internet-connected devices: computers, smartphones, tablets, and wearables. Cloud computing providers store and process data in a location that’s separate from end users.
Essentially, cloud computing means having the ability to store and access data and programs over the internet instead of on a hard drive. This means businesses of any size can harness powerful software and IT infrastructure to become bigger, leaner, and more agile, as well as compete with much larger companies. Unlike with traditional hardware and software, cloud computing helps businesses stay at the forefront of technology without having to make large investments in purchasing, maintaining, and servicing equipment themselves.
Candidates must have prior familiarity with container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes and best practices around these technologies.
The purpose of containerization is that it allows developers to create and deploy applications faster and more securely. With traditional methods, code is developed in a specific computing environment which, when transferred to a new location, often results in bugs and errors.
Docker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zUHg7xjIqQ
Container Orchestration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X48VuDVv0do
Scripting languages candidates should be familiar with. Python, Perl, Ruby, and Go are some of the most popular programming language DevOps skills.
What are the Best Programming & Scripting Languages for DevOps Engineers?
Candidates should be familiar with build technologies such as Maven and Gradle.
A repository holds build artifacts and dependencies of varying types. There are exactly two types of repositories: local and remote: the local repository is a directory on the computer where Maven or Gradle runs. It caches remote downloads and contains temporary build artifacts that you have not yet released.
An important skill candidates should be familiar with is configuration management tools such as Ansible and Chef.
Ansible and chef are examples of configuration management (CM) tools that help sysadmins and DevOps professionals manage a large number of servers. These tools excel at repetitive task automation, simultaneous deployment of apps and packages to a group of servers or configuration and provisioning of new servers from scratch.
Candidates must have prior deployment server experience, such as Tomcat, IIS, Apache, and others.
As the market evolves, it’s only natural for the DevOps engineering to expand and absorb more duties, particularly in non-functional areas like security and monitoring analytics. Begin by concentrating on the skills and responsibilities outlined above.
Wondering if you have the skills to be successful as a DevOps Engineer?
The key priority in DevOps is to provide high-value features in a short amount of time through collaborating across teams. As a result, in order to be effective, a DevOps engineer has specialized interpersonal, tooling, and technical abilities. To put it another way, a DevOps engineer must possess both “soft” and “hard” talents.
Let’s take a look at the essential competencies of a good DevOps engineer.
System Administration skills
DevOps engineers don’t just work on the development side; they also support and manage a unified workflow that incorporates IT operations. A DevOps engineer is responsible for the core tools and environments used by the whole DevOps team, which may include customer-facing skills. This implies a DevOps engineer should be able to serve both internal and external clients, as well as troubleshoot problems as they emerge.
A DevOps engineer should also be able to assure the uptime and availability of production systems. This implies that DevOps engineers should be able to:
- Real-time monitoring of the products
- When something goes wrong or is unavailable, you’ll get proper notifications.
- Assist in the resolution of issues via online support or technical troubleshooting.
DevOps management requires the solution to be up and running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the DevOps engineers are at the heart of this.
Coding skills
A DevOps engineer must be well-versed in test automation and continuous testing. You must first write clean code in several languages, then ensure that your code seamlessly interfaces with that of other teams — often in different settings.
Engineers that work in DevOps have a distinct set of coding duties. A DevOps engineer should be familiar with many scripting languages, such as Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, PHP, Bash, and others, rather than specializing in one. A DevOps engineer should be at ease authoring and debugging bugs in these languages, as well as in OS environments.
These coding abilities should be used by DevOps engineers to either orchestrate a stable and efficient pipeline that is as automated as feasible, or to create new tools that can automate phases in the pipeline to improve team activities.
Working with Quality Assurance teams
At all times, DevOps engineers and QA teams must be in sync. To guarantee that the organization fulfills sprint targets for release dates and outcomes, all testing operations, including automated and manual, must be understood and visible to DevOps engineers. The DevOps engineer should be able to do the following:
Recognize the testing actions that take place.
Throughout the CI/CD cycle, be aware of the testing history.
Recognize QA-driven frameworks and settings.
With this information, the DevOps engineer can determine the appropriate steps for deployment and optimization, as well as whether there are any QA activities, tools, or frameworks that can be reused for other DevOps tasks, such as reproducing production issues, working with specific test environments, and accessing QA platforms.
Strong collaboration and communication skills
Software development, testing, system administrators and deployment become more collaborative with DevOps. It brings together team members with different goals to collaborate toward more efficient and high-quality code releases. Communication and soft skills (both verbal and written) are a must for a successful DevOps role because there cannot be any boundaries between the different personas.
Engineers must communicate with internal management teams involved in the DevOps process on a frequent basis to stay informed about the project’s objectives, roadmap, new features, blocking issues, and other issues. They must also communicate efficiently with clients regarding support difficulties.
Non-technical DevOps Engineers skills
DevOps engineers must be skilled in monitoring production environments and performance measures, as well as security and cloud administration, in addition to “soft” talents. This ensures that fresh builds perform as expected in production. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enables velocity and automation in many enterprises. As a result, a DevOps engineer should be familiar with these technologies.
Familiar with a variety of DevOps tools
A DevOps Engineer must be able to use a variety of complex tools that work together to achieve software delivery goals.
Version control
Version control is a process that allows people to collaborate on the changes they make to a document or software project. It’s important for two reasons: first, it helps ensure that everyone who worked on a project has a copy of the final version, and second, it allows people to revert to previous versions if something goes wrong.
Containerization
Containerization is the packaging of software code with only the operating system (OS) libraries and dependencies needed to run the code, resulting in a single lightweight executable—referred to as a container—that operates consistently on any infrastructure. Containers have become the de facto compute units of current cloud-native apps because they are more portable and resource-efficient than virtual machines (VMs).
Configuration management
Configuration management is the practice of ensuring that a system’s configuration is consistent over time. This ensures that all systems are configured in the same way and can work together as a unified system. Configuration management also helps to maintain system security, by ensuring that only authorized users have access to required files and settings.
Network protocols
Network protocols are the rules that govern how data is communicated between devices on a network. There are many different types of protocols, but the most common are TCP/IP and UDP. TCP and UDP work together to create a network packet stream, which is then sent across the network to the destination device.
Monitoring and analytics
Monitoring and analytics are critical components of any modern data-driven organization. By monitoring your data, you can detect and prevent problems before they become big headaches. And by using analytics to understand your data, you can make informed decisions that help you grow your business.
But monitoring and analytics aren’t always easy or cheap to do. That’s where software like Splunk comes in. Splunk is a powerful platform for collecting, storing, analyzing and visualizing data. It makes it easy to find patterns in your data and to make informed decisions about how to use it. Continuous monitoring is used to monitor application performance, downtimes, error logs, etc. The main tools used are Nagios, Zabbix, Splunk, etc.
Testing and Cloud Quality tools
Testing and quality tools are essential for software development. They can help avoid defects, find problems early, and improve the quality of code. There are a number of different testing and quality tools available, so it’s important to choose the ones that will work best for your project. Some popular tools include automated unit testing, static code analysis, and bug tracking/tracking lines. It’s also important to consider the cloud when selecting a testing and quality tool. Tools that work well in a desktop environment may not be as effective on a cloud-based development platform.
Continuous Integration servers
Continuous Integration (CI) servers are becoming more and more popular in the software development world. They allow developers to check the quality of their code before it is released to the public, and they can also help catch errors early on in the development process. Jenkins and Bamboo are the main tools for Continuous integration.
A DevOps culture
A good DevOps culture is something that can help streamline processes and improve communication between software engineers, cloud providers, IT professionals, and operators. They should be familiar with various tools and technologies used in the development process, as well as have a strong understanding of the network infrastructure. They should be able to troubleshoot problems quickly and recommend solutions. Finally, they must be able to work independently and stay up to date on changes in the industry.
Lastly, a good DevOps engineer is someone who can bridge the gap between development and operations. They have a deep understanding of both sides of the coin, and are able to communicate effectively with both teams. They also have experience implementing automation tools and processes, which makes it easier for everyone involved to get their job done.
If you’re struggling to retain DevOps Engineers then checkout these tips and tricks.
In Summary
A good DevOps engineer is someone who can take a complex system and make it work well. They have the ability to understand how the system works and to put it all together so that it functions as a whole. They also have the know-how to help improve the flow of information within a company.
Individuals from several functions collaborate in DevOps to achieve a common goal: quick, consistent delivery of high-quality code. DevOps engineers are the driving force behind the team’s success in this endeavor.
Jumping into the world of DevOps or struggling to find DevOps Engineers? Reach out to our DevOps recruiters to find your next great hire. If you’re a great DevOps Engineer we’d love to chat with you.
A DevOps career can be financially rewarding and fulfilling role so we hope this articles gives you some extra insight.
When you entrust your DevOps staffing needs to Nexus IT Group, you can be confident that we’ll connect you with industry-leading DevOps specialists who can help your tech team reach new heights. We pride ourselves in working with the best DevOps Engineers in the US.
Get in touch with us today and let’s collaborate.