What Does a DevOps Engineer Do? A Career Guide

Many software engineers use DevOps in their development process or on their team, even if there’s no specific DevOps engineer in their organization. The DevOps career path often begins with a software engineering background. After a bit of experience with software development or system administration, you can transition into DevOps. To become a DevOps Engineer, you have to gain the knowledge and experience necessary to work with diverse teams and technologies.

That doesn’t mean that everyone on the team needs to know how to code. With containerization, Docker’s popular technology, the code for an application and its runtime environment are included in the same image. This means that traditional tools for managing configurations are less critical. At the same time, managing containers has its problems, and a DevOps engineer needs to know how to use tools like Docker Swarm or Kubernetes, which are part of a group called “container orchestrators.” To become a DevOps engineer, you’ll need to know a lot about automation, which is the core of the DevOps process. A DevOps engineer should be able to automate the whole DevOps pipeline, which includes things like CI/CD cycles, monitoring app performance, infrastructure, and configurations.

What is the demand for DevOps Engineer?

One affects and is affected by the other in terms of how well it works. The DevOps method drives a process, the cloud makes it possible to automate DevOps by providing the necessary CI/CD toolset and a way to keep track of resources. Communication and collaboration how to become a devops engineer are essential in DevOps competition because they work. These two factors are significant for breaking down the walls between the Dev and Ops teams, aligning the teams’ goals with the business’s goals, and putting the DevOps culture into place across departments.

• If you’ve got the right skills, employers will be fighting tooth and nail to hire you.
• DevOps hiring managers say there is no practical substitute for hands-on experience.
• Project management is important in developing a solid DevOps culture, and engineers are largely responsible for it.
• As the organization’s expert on DevOps, it’s up to the DevOps engineer to help spread the word and teach people about the DevOps way.
• Specifically, a DevOps engineer focuses on automation and maintenance in the live environment, so it’s common to find job roles that underscore automation and maintenance of software products, systems and services.

Earnings may be lower in regions with lower overall salaries for all workers, but even there, DevOps engineers are in most cases among the highest-paid types of employees. We could go on, but the point is that no matter where you are located, you can find a high-paying job as a DevOps engineer. Keep in mind, too, that many DevOps jobs can be performed remotely, which makes it possible in some cases to work as a DevOps engineer for a company based in another region or country.

By organization type

Unsurprisingly, affluent countries with high average salaries for all employees tend to be places where you can earn the most as a DevOps engineer. DevOps engineers in the United States, where the average DevOps salary is around $134,000 as of 2023, are among the highest-paid of all DevOps engineers. In Europe, western European countries, like Germany and Switzerland, have higher rates of pay for DevOps engineers than other countries. Although there is no single set of tools that every DevOps engineer needs to know, most DevOps engineers rely on certain categories of tools to help them perform their jobs. No matter your career background or the strategy you are considering to become a DevOps engineer, however, there are several key steps that you’ll need to cover in order to qualify yourself to work in DevOps.

• Keep in mind, too, that many DevOps jobs can be performed remotely, which makes it possible in some cases to work as a DevOps engineer for a company based in another region or country.
• In addition to this, DevOps as the name suggests is the combination of Dev (development) and Ops (Operations) that requires the engineer to have an explicit yet innovative mindset to unify both different, siloed teams.
• A DevOps practice that makes a central repository of all the different codes by different developers into an individual software.
• Every one has to perform continuous collaboration and communicate frequently, improve the quality of services.

The applications delivered with the DevOps methodology or tools have a higher velocity than the traditional working of organizations where development and operations teams are siloed. Most DevOps engineers have a bachelor’s degree in computer science or software engineering. However, a degree isn’t necessarily required to land a job in this field. A degree helps you learn the hard skills you need, but you can also supplement with courses and certifications. A DevOps engineer is an information technology (IT) professional who works as the go-between for the software engineering and operations teams of a company. Additionally, DevOps engineers need to be able to work together with development and operations teams – as well as with other departments in the company – to continually improve collaboration and processes.

Step 3: Learn about coding and software engineering

As a DevOps engineer, you need some programming knowledge as you’ll be writing code when building infrastructure and automating tasks. DevOps also uses a set of tools and platforms to help automate processes, making the SDLC faster and more efficient. These soft skills are critical in getting everyone on your DevOps team to work together.

The web backend is her forte, as well as newer technologies like machine learning, DevOps, and the cloud. Once in a while, she’ll pen down some new things she’s learning on dev.to or freecodecamp. When she’s not behind a computer, you’ll find her outdoors trying to connect with nature. The loop consists of steps like planning, coding, building, testing, code release, deployment, operations, and monitoring.

What is a DevOps engineer?

Professionals can then progress into a senior DevOps engineer role, and eventually management and leadership positions like DevOps engineering manager. You need to understand core DevOps concepts like infrastructure management, CI/CD, containerization, and cloud computing. Eventually, you can become a senior or lead DevOps engineer, depending on how your company or organization is structured. DevOps engineers are responsible for infrastructure provisioning, infrastructure management, process automation, system administration, and security for an entire organization. A DevOps engineer is an IT professional that that manages an organization’s developer operations (DevOps), which includes all the practices and tools that the organization uses to create and manage software. CI/CD introduces ongoing automation and continuous monitoring throughout the lifecycle of apps, from integration and testing phases to delivery and deployment.

They also need experience with the classical developer toolset and practices, like using source control, receiving and giving code reviews, writing unit tests, and being familiar with agile principles. A DevOps engineer is a generalist in IT who should know a lot about both operations and development, such as how to code, manage infrastructure, run systems, and use DevOps toolchains. DevOps engineers also need to be an all-rounder since they work across company silos to make the workplace more collaborative. In this article, we’ll introduce you to DevOps and explain what is a DevOps developer?