IT Professionals Wanted: Becoming a DevOps Engineer

What You Need to Know about the DevOps Engineer Role

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IT professionals are in demand, yet the lack of qualified candidates creates a highly competitive job marketplace. For you, the IT professional, there is a great big world of opportunity out there but you need the right mix of skills to land an IT dream job.

As DevOps plays a growing factor in enterprise success, new roles have emerged as skilled professionals are desperately needed to help companies deliver the best quality products and solutions at speed. One role that has shot to the top of demand is the DevOps Engineer.

Job sites like Glassdoor have deemed the “DevOps Engineer” among the top ten “Best Jobs in America in 2019.” The DevOps Engineer also led LinkedIn’s top recruited jobs in 2018, while the average U.S. salary is a solid $115,666, according to recent Glassdoor estimates.

Unfortunately, the role’s fast and recent emergence has led to debates among organizations and DevOps experts alike. We’ve seen many cynical business leaders even write the position off as nothing more than recruitment buzz. Another challenge, cited in the 2019 Upskilling: Enterprise DevOps Skills report, highlighted the issue of not having a clear definition of what DevOps means as a key hiring challenge.

Despite the lack of clarity, DevOps Engineer job openings continue to roll in and organizations are demanding skilled engineers who can help them navigate organizational transformation. All signs point to a role that is here to stay.

Are you a DevOps Engineer in the making?

The latest Upskilling report revealed that 39 percent of respondents are hiring or recently hired a DevOps Engineer. While there is a lot of room for interpretation in terms of what skills will best fit the role, we most often see companies looking for someone to skillfully direct and execute automation, CI/CD and operations of the software delivery lifecycle as part of their DevOps strategy.

We recently shared insights for organizations looking to hire a DevOps Engineer and we believe this list of skills can also help you determine whether the DevOps Engineer role is right for you. Be prepared to pivot and be flexible despite these key competencies we have identified — because the role truly varies by organization. For example, most DevOps Engineers will want to have a healthy mix of technical and soft skills, but the emphasis depends on key stakeholders. As more executive leadership teams become involved in DevOps, the emphasis on soft skills will continue to grow, however, at organizations where an engineering or technical team has the most leverage, your technical skills will likely be the most important qualifying skills. The Upskilling Report reinforced this theme, as a small majority of respondents (32 percent) prefer to look first for technical skills, while 30 percent will look for soft skills first.

DevOps Engineer Skills

Many of the skills identified here are common needs we identified in the Upskilling Report. With the right combination of skills and knowledge, you can be the ideal DevOps Engineer candidate. Here are some of the key skills that the hiring organization will look for:

The T-shaped Professional:

• Anyone looking to advance an IT career in the world of Agile and DevOps needs to be a T-shaped professional — having depth in a specific discipline or disciplines, but also the ability to reach into other disciplines as needed to successfully accomplish the job. The Upskilling report indicated a clear need for these types of professionals, so ensuring that you fit the T-shape is going to give you an edge in a competitive market.

Core competencies in a specific area such as:

• Software development or automation architecture — (again, these core competencies will depend on your individual organization’s needs)
• Expertise in continuous integration and continuous deployment

The DevOps Engineer is considered a strong candidate if they also have most of the following skills:

Expertise and understanding of automation

• This requirement ranks high, along with the core competencies, as most businesses list automation as part of the DevOps Engineer job description.

Process skills

• An understanding of the process that leads to intelligent automation — this was confirmed by 47 percent of respondents in the Upskilling report.
• A deep understanding of the software development lifecycle or process flow and analysis
• Agile skills
• Previous experience with source control models and processes

Technical skills

• Cloud computing experience
• Analytical skills
• Experience with commonly used software development and delivery tools
• Coding and scripting

Functional Skills

• Security has emerged as a top functional skill and will likely continue to grow in importance
• IT operations and infrastructure knowledge
• Application development and design
• Development of UX/UI experiences

Soft Skills

According to the Upskilling Report, these are most important to business leaders — below are some of the top ‘soft’ skills for a DevOps Engineer identified in the report:

• The ability to collaborate and cooperate
• Intelligent problem solving
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Adept at sharing and knowledge transfer
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Other common soft skills include: creativity, persuasion and time management

This is not an all-inclusive list of skills and there is certainly room for interpretation. As previously mentioned, LinkedIn and Glassdoor are great places to look for DevOps Engineer openings, and a well put together job description will give you a feel for what they are hoping the DevOps Engineer will accomplish. Also, look for opportunities internally. According to the Upskilling Report, 52 percent of companies would plan to recruit DevOps Engineers internally.

The DevOps Engineer is on track for a bright future as more organizations put DevOps into practice and the responsibilities of the role become more clear. With strong salaries and plenty of job opportunities in an area of software development that is growing and making an impact for many businesses, this is one position that you might want to consider.

DevOps Institute is dedicated to advancing the human elements of DevOps success through the SKIL Framework: Skills, Knowledge, Ideas, and Learning. Learn more.