Top 10 Skills That Make A ‘Perfect’ DevOps Engineer

By Veritis

DevOps Engineer

DevOps everywhere!

More than a technology solution, DevOps emerged as the common buzz word for the IT industry, especially the US IT market.

What makes it so popular is its ability to drive consistent, secure and faster software delivery resulting in reduced time-to-market and improved end-user satisfaction.

Given these benefits, DevOps has become the need of the hour for many leading enterprises. Even the small and medium companies are also laying their paths into DevOps. All they need is DevOps engineers and DevOps expertise!

Do you know? DevOps is one of the top most-wanted technology roles that the US IT industry is looking for!

What is DevOps engineer? What does  DevOps engineer do? That is the question that an aspiring DevOps engineer has. DevOps is not a technology but more of a production methodology. Drawing cues from the agile, DevOps developers bring together swift development speeds and automation capabilities.

While robust products were guaranteed with agile, DevOps emphasizes automation, reducing errors, and improving speed. The other significant concept of DevOps is that developers and operations staff members work in tandem instead of in siloes. This is the other principle that drives the growth and success of DevOps.

Finally, how to become a DevOps engineer, one has to have the aptitude to communicate and collaborate. While courses on coding and testing are a vital part of a DevOps engineer skills, communication skills are essential to a successful DevOps developer.

Want to tap this highly-paid opportunity? Then you would need to excel in the following 10 areas that make the powerful DevOps skillset.

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Top 10 Skills for DevOps Engineer Professionals

Top 10 Areas That Make the Powerful DevOps Skillset

1) Communication and Collaboration

Given its basic nature, communication and collaboration are crucial to succeed in DevOps competition. These two are very important to break down the siloes between Dev and Ops teams, align teams’ goals to business objectives, and implement DevOps culture cross-functionally.

2) Soft Skills and Noble Thought

It’s not enough if you are just good at coding and automation. DevOps needs a different you who is also good at soft skills, self-motivation, flexibility, and learning. DevOps professionals should be the doers as well as listeners.

They should be clear about the fact that DevOps transformation involves stakeholder discussions, awareness about business goals, assessment, and identification of improvement areas, all driven by collaboration.

3) Understanding of Relevant Tools

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

4) Security Skills

The rate of risks often matches the speed of deployment that DevOps facilitates. Given this constraint, security at the end or as a separate process in the traditional method might not work. This is where DevSecOps is an advantage in integrating security with SDLC right from the start.

So, DevSecOps skillset will definitely be an added advantage to success as a DevOps professional.

5) Automation Skills

Being called as a DevOps engineer will require a good command over automation, the heart of DevOps process. A DevOps engineer should be capable of automating the entire DevOps pipeline, including CI/CD cycles, app performance monitoring, infrastructure and configurations, among others.

DevOps automation skillset is closely linked to ability in knowledge about DevOps toolset, coding and scripting.

6) Coding and Scripting

Coding and scripting are two important skillset that DevOps engineer should possess. Python, Ruby, Python, Java, Javascript, PHP, Bash, Shell and Node.js are among the most recommended programming/scripting languages.

Linux is one of the operating environments that hardcore developers continue to use even to this day. There is plenty of freedom to operate around, and this flexibility is favorable to DevOps engineers globally. So, while every DevOps developer doesn’t always rope in Linux, it shall undoubtedly be used by every DevOps engineer at some point in their career. 

Learning the fundamentals of Linux, such as connecting to a server and creating and editing files, is not difficult. This qualifies as common knowledge. However, it may take years to become an expert DevOps engineer. While it is not a strictly required skill, large organizations frequently remain with well-known, well-established Linux distributions, typically because they want to support and because the programs they wish to employ are only approved for usage on these well-known distributors. Various courses are available on the web, typically from Red Hat. One can enroll in one of them and get cracking with coding and scripting.

7) Cloud Skills

Cloud and DevOps are always together. The efficiency of one is directly dependent on and influenced by the other. While DevOps methodology drives a process, cloud enables that process by providing it with necessary platform to perform test, deploy and release code.

Cloud enables DevOps automation with the required CI/CD toolset and facilitates a resource monitoring mechanism.

8) Testing Skills

Testing stands crucial to DevOps success. DevOps automation pipeline will need tests that run well without fail. This is important for the success of continuous testing, where automated tests are executed.

Automated test cases make the process faster and ensures quality delivery to the end-user.

9) Customer-Focused Approach

Customer satisfaction is the end goal of any successful DevOps process. Given this factor, DevOps professionals should ensure every function they perform follows business objectives and delivers value to the end-user.

In the process, they will need to collaborate with stakeholders, such as developers, testers, project managers, and the organization’s thought leadership, towards a common goal.

10) Proactiveness

DevOps engineers/pros will need proactiveness and passion towards work, which directly reflects performance and productivity. Moreover, staying updated with relevant technologies, new tools, and more is part of your process.

Passion and Proactiveness make you a successful DevOps professional.

In Conclusion
DevOps is merely a culture more than a technology solution. The more you understand, the more beneficiary it will be. But to succeed in the DevOps journey, as a professional, company, or service provider, you need openness to change, flexibility in operations, and a combination of hard and soft skills.

Wait no more! Find your potential DevOps opportunity!

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Make A ‘Perfect’ DevOps Engineer FAQ’s

The term DevOps emerged as the hottest buzzword in the IT field right now.

The top skills that are essential for a DevOps engineer are

  1. Communication and collaboration
  2. Security skills
  3. Soft Skills and noble thought
  4. Automation skills
  5. Cloud skills and more

DevOps engineer must understand the concepts of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and various automation tools for developing digital pipelines (CI/CD pipelines).

DevOps engineer works with software developers, IT staff, and system operators to oversee the code releases.

There are a lot of benefits of having a team for DevOps engineers, and few are fast and frequent delivery, scale with minimum risks, reliability, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), security, and more.

DevOps has a tremendous promising future, and many organizations are set to adopt this methodology. DevOps practical applications are increasing day by day.

Moreover, DevOps methodologies continue to add new automation tools and technologies to evaluate error-prone human tasks, deploy within the DevOps timeline, and accelerate development.

DevOps is merely a culture more than a technology solution. We have five recommendations to develop your DevOps skills - develop your brand with community involvement, build the skills, start cross-training now, understand the concepts of significant DevOps tools, and command automation technology tools.

DevOps technology is an approach (or methodology) that guides and automates the software development process.

The are many technologies for DevOps to improve your knowledge, and some of them are Basis technology, Splunk, Nagios, Docker, Artifactory, UpGuard, and more.

Docker , Nagios, Slack, Jenkins, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Splunk, Kubernetes, and Git are the most common DevOps tools in the IT field right now.

Nowadays, Git is a modern and widely used version control system tool in the current market.

A DevOps consultant is a certified DevOps professional that helps companies use the tools and practices to make the development process more cost-effective and efficient.
The role of a DevOps consultant is to assess the company’s DevOps culture, tools, and practices and offer practical guidelines and a plan of action to reach a better business outcome.
Veritis DevOps consulting services offers end-to-end solutions and strategies for better IT performance and continual output with quick delivery and cost-effective solution.

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