Every single day, new technologies emerge, and developers have to upgrade themselves to cope with the prevailing needs of the market. In the tech industry, DevOps has been a buzzword currently. Speaking about the related experts, they fall in the categories of DevOps Architects, DevOps Engineers, Infrastructure Engineers, or even Operations Engineers, depending on their work. These specialists come from a diverse group of developers, who have technical background of software and systems.
With the increasing popularity and growing business needs, organizations have started to adopt DevOps for their upcoming profitable projects. DevOps is not the same as an operations role. Also, DevOps engineers are not the same as software developers or QA engineers, either. These specialists work to solve high-level operational and efficiency challenges within a technical team.
As we discussed above, DevOps experts fall in various categories based on their area of work. It becomes difficult for enterprises to decide upon which DevOps expert will be the right one for their application development. Moreover, it also depends on the project requirements and future business goals.
Primarily, DevOps specialists streamline collaboration, perform QA, automate essential processes, and more. However, if you are looking for the right DevOps experts for your business project, then they should possess some basic skills that will define them or separate them from other specialists.
Let us find out the must-have skills of a DevOps developer.
Top 10 must-have Skills
1. Soft skills
DevOps includes transforming the functional work experience between the development and operations teams by breaking down the traditional silos.
Therefore, a DevOps engineer will need to perform as a bridge between the silos and bring different teams together to work towards a common goal.
When they remove the obstacles of the traditional approach of software development, they are able to deliver applications in a much shorter period of time. Moreover, responsive market deployment and good communication will lead to fewer errors, lower costs, and will also improve the quality of code.
2. Broad Understanding of Tools and Technologies
As new technologies and tools keep emerging on the DevOps landscape, it is significant for a skilled DevOps engineer to have an extensive understanding of the following areas.
- Source Control (Git, Bitbucket, Svn, VSTS, etc)
- Continuous Integration (Jenkins, Bamboo, VSTS)
- Infrastructure Automation (Puppet, Chef, Ansible)
- Deployment Automation & Orchestration (Jenkins, VSTS, Octopus Deploy)
- Container Concepts (LXD, Docker)
- Orchestration (Kubernetes, Mesos, Swarm)
- Cloud (AWS, Azure, GoogleCloud, OpenStack)
Besides, it is essential for a DevOps expert to be always open to learn new things that come their way during development. They should be ready for new challenges that arise in different processes.
3. Flexibility
Coding is an integral part of the development, and it is an on-going process that keeps changing with the emerging and required updates. A good DevOps expert must have flexible working skills and adapt to the changing code.
Developers must be comfortable shifting from one area of software development to another, whether it is integration, testing, releasing, or deployment. For example, continuous integration requires technical skills to handle the change quickly and efficiently, along with being able to work collaboratively in a team. The ultimate aim should be to work towards achieving a common goal.
4. Experienced in Infrastructure Automation Tools
One of the key elements of a DevOps environment is automation. Several manual tasks performed in the traditional approach can be automated with the help of scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, Bash, Shell, Node.js, and others. As a result, they can assure that the manual tasks are performed without the involvement of the human component, which saves time.
A DevOps expert must have the ability to implement automation technologies and tools at any level of requirements, development, testing, and operations.
5. Security Skills
Security has always been the topmost priority of enterprises, and when it comes to coding, it holds the utmost significance. Hackers can easily peep into systems through their vulnerabilities, thereby making it weak in deriving the data.
DevOps accelerates the cycle of development and deployment of code, which increases the risk of code’s vulnerabilities than earlier it used to be. It is, therefore, critical for DevOps engineers to write secure code to protect applications from unwanted attacks of hackers. As a result, systems are ensured with a security mechanism against the cybersecurity weaknesses.
6. Scripting Skills
It is primary that any developer must have high-quality skills in scripting code. Be it, JavaScript, Python, Perl, or Ruby, a successful DevOps engineer must be able to write code.
These experts are expected to perform tasks from writing manual code to replacing manual processes like assigning IP addresses or DNS codes.
7. Testing
Automation is driven by testing. Therefore, a DevOps expert should have strong testing skills. It is critical that proper tests should be in place to assure that each function is performing pre-defined tasks. They run tests during stages from development to deployment to make sure that the entire system is functioning efficiently with new features.
8. Decision-making
An indecisive candidate would not suit for your business development. A successful DevOps expert will have the ability to make decisions confidently and quickly in a hustle-bustle environment.
It is necessary for a DevOps engineer to take prompt decisions to cope with the ever-changing nature of the code. They need to decide as to how they will fix any incoherent elements within the code. Therefore, you need to consider decisiveness when you select the right DevOps developer for your project as it allows them to maintain the capability of rapid development and deployment of new code changes.
10. Network Awareness
A DevOps engineer must be well aware of the network. The main aim of any DevOps project is to successfully deliver an application to the end user. Moreover, they are accountable for the network in their design, planning, and testing.
Last Words
Thus, when you plan to hire the right DevOps developer for your business application, then you must consider the skills we discussed above. However, there are various other technical skills as well that makes him the right candidate.
Besides, if you plan to hire a company that offers DevOps as a service, then make sure that you confirm its credibility.
Author Name: Manish Shewaramani
Author Bio: Manish is principle consultant at Credencys Solutions Inc. an iPhone app development company. He is both an innovator and inventor and is an expert in transforming ambiguous ideas into concise, executable strategies that mitigate risk, maximize ROI and obtain timely measurable business results. He has led several technical and non-technical projects and has experience of the complete project life cycle.
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