That said, many tech professionals still don’t understand what they do or even, is DevOps a good career choice? This article will aim to answer all the questions you have about the subject but were too afraid to ask. Hopefully, by the time you’ve read it, you will have a much better understanding of what it is and whether or not it’s a career path worth pursuing.

What the Heck is DevOps Anyway?

To understand what DevOps is, you first need to understand one of the most significant problems in software development.

For a long time in business, there has been a massive gap between the work done by software developers and the time it takes to put that into operation. For example, sometimes, it can take months to push a simple bug fix into the live environment of a mobile app. DevOps is an IT culture shift that questions: How can we make this happen more quickly?

DevOps is a school of thought that brings together agile and lean methodologies and a system-oriented approach to problem-solving. In essence, it empowers people to accomplish more by improving collaboration between the Development and Operations Teams through various tools and technologies available. In doing so, it enables businesses to deploy higher-quality code faster while constantly enhancing cooperation and trust.

DevOps professional collaborating with other teams, bringing people together to make things happen — DevOps is all about collaboration – bringing ideas together and making the best use of tools available to make things happen.

Popular DevOps Job titles

DevOps is not a stand-alone job title, rather a new way of doing things. As there is so little understanding around the subject, many tech professionals believe that having job titles including the term DevOps could limit their career options. So if you’re looking for this kind of role, these are the job titles to look out for on the job boards:

DevOps Engineer
Platform Engineer
Build Engineer
Site Reliability Engineer
System Engineer
Cyber Security Engineer
Product Manager
Release Manager
Data Analyst
QA Lead
Automation Architect
DevOps Software Developer… Evangelist… Guru… Rockstar…

What Does a DevOps Engineer Do?

OK, so we’ve already established that people who work in this profession may not necessarily be called DevOps Engineers. However, in an attempt to simplify an already complex topic, that’s what we’re going to call them.

In a nutshell, they enable companies to produce and maintain quality software. To achieve this, their job may include the following daily responsibilities:

Project management
Designing and improving the IT infrastructure
Systems testing
Benchmarking
Development testing
Identifying opportunities for automation
Optimising release cycles
Monitoring and reporting
Maintaining IT security

A human hand and a robotic hand pointing to a computer screen — DevOps looks for opportunities to automate repetitive tasks thus freeing up the time of tech professionals so they can get on with more important tasks.

Technical Tools Used By DevOps Professionals

Automation tools such as Selenium, LambdaTest or Eggplant.
Source code management/control, with the most popular being Git.
Repository hosting such as Azure, Github or Bitbucket.
Containerisation software, for example, Docker, AWS or Kubernetes
Configuration management such as Chef, Puppet or CFEngine.
Monitoring software, e.g. Raygun, Splunk or Appdynamics.
Communication and collaboration using Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Project management tools such as Trello or Jira.

Skills Required for a Career in DevOps

DevOps Engineers are IT professionals with a broad knowledge of the topic. Careers in this field often begin in Software Development or Operations. Either way, they will also need a good understanding of coding, infrastructure management, systems administration and toolchains.

Technical Skills

Expert DevOps skills on the technical side include IT Security, the ability to understand and write code and a good knowledge of IT infrastructure. Although they may not be expected to perform all technical tasks themselves, they should be able to have detailed conversations with others who will.

Soft Skills

The soft skills required include communication, teamwork, interpersonal skills, collaboration, decision-making, and flexibility.

So Is DevOps a Good Career Choice?

Tech professionals, in general, are in high demand at present. Although the demand for DevOps professionals is exceptionally high, some say that it will be the most in-demand job of the future.

As far as job satisfaction goes, these roles encompass so many different elements of IT, it’s unlikely you’ll ever get bored in this role. However, some might find so much variety too much of a challenge.

Salary wise, they are among some of the most well-paid tech professionals, with salaries ranging from £50,000 to £80,000. That said, this is not a job you can expect to walk into fresh from university. It is a job you would sidestep into after acquiring extensive experience within the IT sector.

A Few Final Thoughts

This is by no means an entry-level job, but more of a long term IT career goal. That said, if you started your IT career with ambitions of achieving this sought after role, it’s unlikely you would ever be out of a job. Or, for that matter, suffer from career boredom!

Even if you start out on this career path but decide to pursue a different direction, the skills you acquire along the way would make you highly employable. That said, the vast array of skills and work experience needed to land a job like this is enough to give some people major career fear!

After reading this article, we hope that you now know a little bit more about this vast subject and whether or not DevOps is a good career choice for you. We hope you found it helpful, and if so, you share it on social media where others can benefit from its usefulness.