What is a DevOps Engineer? A Complete Guide

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By Vijay Singh Khatri

DevOps frequently involves an organization’s machinery while establishing the system or structure by which both development and operational tasks work independently. To execute DevOps correctly, the right people, culture, and tools are required. However, there may be some roadblocks, such as insufficient worker skills, that prevent them from implementing DevOps. Atlassian’s 2020 DevOps Trends Survey results include the same analysis.

The key role in carrying out the DevOps rebuilding is that of a DevOps engineer. The DevOps engineer must have a specific skill set that allows him or her to manage both the operations and development components at the same time. Furthermore, the engineer must have the relational abilities to connect the siloed groups.

In general, a DevOps engineer has a rewarding career in an IT organization. Because organizations are looking for engineers who can perform development and operational tasks while also possessing all of the necessary skills. As a result, if you are an aspirant considering a career as a DevOps engineer, this content is for you. You will learn about DevOps, what they do, and what their roles and responsibilities are.

Who is a DevOps Engineer?

A DevOps Engineer is an employee in an organization that handles the IT system according to the prerequisites of the software code. This specific code is committed in a half-and-half multi-tenant environment. To obtain the correct deployment infrastructure, some resources may be required for provisioning it, as well as for approving and observing the presentation.

With regards to DevOps, for better testing and deployment, there is a need to have regular and steady changes in the code version. It probably won’t be consistently feasible for DevOps engineers to do the coding without any preparation, yet they should be aware of it.

A DevOps engineer is a person who can interlink the numerous elements of coding alongside libraries and development kits of software. Adding to this, the engineer is also responsible for incorporating different parts of SQL data management or tools for messaging for the new software releases into the operating system and the production system. In simple terms, the DevOps term appears from the handling of development and operations together to develop a self-explanatory term. DevOps engineers and the DevOps team collaborate between deployment and development to ensure that updates are released effectively.

What does a DevOps Engineer do?

The capabilities of DevOps engineers may differ from one organization to the next. However, the fundamental role of DevOps engineers is to reduce inaccuracy and to act as a bridge between the activities required to change an application and to maintain its reliability.

The development team’s goals and skill set may differ from that of the IT operational team. The developers are the only ones who can install new features, whereas the operational team is responsible for maintaining an application’s reliability after it has been released. DevOps engineers are constantly looking for ways to consolidate code, manage applications, and keep them up to date. These endeavors rely on an understanding of the development life cycle as well as the DevOps culture, including its way of thinking, practices, and tools.

A few businesses may hire experts to work as DevOps in their work processes. However, because successful DevOps adoption is dependent on cultural and process changes, the absence of the same may simply widen the gap between developers and operational groups.

Aside from that, a DevOps person in an organization is responsible for a variety of other tasks and responsibilities, as listed below.

Responsibilities of DevOps engineer

There’s no doubt that DevOps engineers collectively work with different types of teams and departments. They all work to make software systems. DevOps are usually the IT experts who team up with software developers, quality assurance experts, and IT staff to oversee the release of code.

Multitasking is the foremost need for DevOps, along with showing adaptability and tackling various situations simultaneously. There are other responsibilities that a DevOps engineer performs that include:

Documentation

DevOps engineers also compose process documents explaining the development requirements and server-side features

System analysis

They also analyze the currently used technology and develop plans to make improvements to it. The DevOps engineer offers help for rapid analysis needs.

Development

DevOps helps in developing, coding, constructing, and installing IT solutions. Additionally, they also arrange and keep up with certain IT software arrangements.

Project planning

DevOps has a special role in the project planning team to clearly discuss the risks, effects, and cost vs. benefits of the project. Also, DevOps engineers share the prerequisites and forecasts of development.

Testing

In order to examine the different ways to streamline and reduce errors, DevOps also tests code, processes, and deployments.

Deployment

Deployment is the main task for DevOps. DevOps employs configuration management software in the production environment.

Maintenance and investigating

DevOps regularly performs application maintenance to ensure the smooth operation of the production environment. They also create maintenance necessities and systems.

Performance management

Delivering the best performance is the main aim of DevOps. Thus, for this, they do performance improvements by identifying and substituting solutions and helping with alterations.

Management

Managing the organization’s team is another important responsibility of DevOps. So they usually manage the deployment and operational teams and are also responsible for dealing with them.

What are DevOps Tools?

In an organization, DevOps has many responsibilities and roles to play. As a result, it is obvious that some tools must be used to perform specific tasks. However, there are a few tools that can help DevOps automate the deployment delivery and integration process. However, if you want to be a DevOps engineer, you must become acquainted with or master the deployment tools that aid in script automation and delivery.

  • Source control instruments – The source control tools are like Git, Jira, and Subversion. These tools enable the DevOps engineer to monitor the changes in the projects. Thus, later on, if required, they return to the previous version of the code with a streamlined process. Moreover, these tools could be useful in comparing the current working version of code with the previous version to track down any new bugs and fix issues.
  • Continuous integration tools – When DevOps test the automated code tests and submit changes to a version control repository, in such a situation, the continuous integration tools come in handy. To get the organization’s feedback and report on deployed software, tools like Jenkins, Buildbot, and Buddy are used. With the help of these tools, you can become aware of the deficiency and quickly resolve it.
  • Group management tools – Devops have to manage the team, thus tools like Agile Manager and Agile Bench come in handy for managing tools. With both tools, one can manage the group assignments and examine the status and schedules.
  • Visualization tools – DevOps can accurately understand and examine the whole system to track and fix certain problems rapidly, so visualization helps to do this quickly. With a quick investigation of the issues, one can plan for future extensions. Lucidchart is a tool that enables DevOps to visualize complex networks, codebases, and system patterns. These visuals could be shared with colleagues to support coordinated efforts from anywhere globally.

How to be a DevOps engineer?

After learning about DevOps engineers and their roles and functions in an organization, you must have a clear picture in your mind if you want to jump into this field.

Typically, a candidate must have a degree in a technical or scientific (science, engineering, math, or technology) field in order to work as a DevOps engineer in a reputable organization. Moreover, acquiring a Master’s degree would be more beneficial and strengthen your resume.

Apart from that, to be a DevOps engineer, one must understand the various tools that are utilized in the field for different kinds of deployment, testing, and creating technologies. For this, having a software engineering degree would be beneficial for you. Or you can also acquire some advanced certificate programs to understand the basics of these tools.

Moving further, adding the foundation technologies to your resume would be more than enough to have a good job in a reputed organization. These foundation skills must be at the fingertips of a DevOps engineer.

These foundation technologies are:

  1. Linux
  2. Python
  3. Amazon Web services

Key Skills Required to be a DevOps engineer

Apart from the qualifications, learning tools, and foundation skills, there are some skill sets that you must master to be an expert DevOps engineer. These important skills will add up on your resume and help you stay ahead of other aspirants.

The important skills are:

  • DevOps should be able to collaborate with the team to perform projects.
  • Great communication skills would be required while working with a team.
  • Experience in different required programming languages is a must.
  • A DevOps should have problem-solving skills to always keep going on the project without issues.
  • Multitasking is a must to perform certain tasks and projects simultaneously.
  • A DevOps team must stay current on the latest technologies and skills.
  • DevOps must learn time management skills along with exceptional organizational skills.

Conclusion

Overall, hopefully, the above-mentioned guide will help you progress from novice to expert DevOps engineer. Without a doubt, DevOps engineers will be a valuable asset to IT organizations. However, if you have just begun learning and are new to this field, you should strive to acquire the most up-to-date skills. As a result, the developer can quickly become a DevOps Engineer because they understand the developer’s day-to-day requirements.

If you are already a developer, you may be able to improve the DevOps engineer’s post-employment efficiency with prior knowledge. It is recommended that you learn to create tools and software in order to gain more practical experience.

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