DevOps Career Path: A Comprehensive Guide For 2021
Introduction
If you’re thinking of joining this revolutionary trend by selecting the DevOps career path, then it is high time that you take up the cudgel and get yourself trained in DevOps-related skills. In this article, we’ll examine the DevOps career path for engineers.
Technology has empowered the human race throughout history, from the handloom to supercomputers to smartphones, et al. The way the emerging technology space is exponentially moving ahead gives us a hint that in a few decades, our world could be unrecognizably different. The cascading effect of the digital revolution will continue to be felt across every industry domain, causing wide-scale enterprise disruptions and redefining customer expectations. Meanwhile, as platforms and applications are progressing at lightning speed, the supporting development mechanisms are also witnessing a major tectonic shift for some time. Moreover, a steady spike in demand for DevOps jobs across various industry segments is being witnessed.
A portmanteau of “development” and “operations”, DevOps is the combination of process, people and technology to continuously add value to customers through the increase of an organization’s ability to deliver services and applications at a faster velocity.
It is a cultural shift that tends to bridge the gap between development and operation teams, which historically is known to function in siloes. DevOps work in-sync across the entire software application life cycle – from design and development process to production, releases and support.
Because of its continuous nature, the practitioners of DevOps often use an infinity loop to demonstrate how the phases of its life cycle relate to each other – the loop symbolizes the need for constant collaboration and iterative improvement throughout its life cycle.
In this article let us look at:
- Rising Demand for DevOps Talent
- DevOps Career Path that Promises Steady Growth
- Your Key Responsibility Areas (KRA) as DevOps Expert
- Technical Skills Needed to Build a Career in DevOps
1. Rising Demand for DevOps Talent
DevOps are creating ripples in the IT sector by eliminating one of the current challenges, the conflicts between development and operations teams.
The demand for open source professionals, like DevOps, is currently raging high, and there are no signs of it slowing down; in the immediate future.
This trend is also reflected in Job websites like indeed.com, where a 75% spike in Job listings related to DevOps were witnessed. Also, social media portals like LinkedIn have clocked a rise of 50% in mention of DevOps developers as a key skill.
Interestingly, around 65% of the hiring managers are looking to employ DevOps Talent.
Today, IT companies across the globe are bent on reducing productivity – time with the aid of automation, to outmanoeuvre their competitors. This makes learning DevOps an important cog in the wheel of a rewarding career in Future.
2. DevOps Career Path that Promises Steady Growth
DevOps career path growth depends on your proficiency in handling various DevOps automation tools and procedures.
DevOps career path are among the highest-paid groups in the IT sector. This calls for a special look at the sector from the career angle. Here is a list of DevOps career roles:
- Automation Architect
- Release Manager
- Software Developer
- Experience Assurance ( XA ) Professional
- Security Engineer
- Utility Technology player
- Evangelist.
It is estimated that the DevOps market will touch $ 9.41 billion globally by 2023.
The DevOps scope offers lucrative career opportunities since MNC Tech companies like Google, Accenture, Amazon, Facebook, etc., are always eager to offer jobs to seasoned DevOps. To build a steady career, industry-recognized training in DevOps is necessary. But those who have managed to do advanced DevOps courses from reputed institutes and got certified are likely to have a more stable future.
3. Your Key Responsibility Areas (KRA) as DevOps Expert
DevOps should have excellent communication skills as he has to coordinate with various departments in an IT company. Their key roles and responsibilities include:
- Improvement of the design of an IT infrastructure.
- As a Project manager of an IT assignment, and answer all the relevant questions.
- Performance testing and benchmarking of IT systems.
- To get rid of hidden time drain by optimization of release cycles.
- Introducing different methods of smooth process execution.
- Automate and build software plugins that can reduce the IT team’s load.
- Automation of security along with development and operation processes.
- Help to eliminate TTD (time to deduct) and minimise TTM (time to minimise) through effective reporting and monitoring of IT systems.
The DevOps basically work with internal teams, rarely working with external customers or end-users.
4. Technical Skills Needed to Build a Career in DevOps
The DevOps space, therefore, offers an excellent career path for DevOps engineers, provided one has the required DevOps related skills at their disposal.
To become a DevOps Engineer, it is desirable that you have a bachelor’s degree in either Computer Science or IT or in relevant fields. Over and above, you need to understand thoroughly:
- Linux environment, web development, Java and related computer languages like Python, Ruby or Pearl. Also, knowledge of at least one scripting language (Python, Pearl or Ruby) is absolutely necessary.
- Continuous integration mechanisms (Jenkins, Travis CI, etc.).
- Continuous testing methodology (Docker, Test Complete, Tricentis Tosca, etc.).
- Continuous monitoring systems (Nagios, Sens Splunk CI/CD process, etc.).
- Infrastructure as code (IAC) models. IAC helps to bridge the gap between the developer and the hardware Admin by integrating them into a single platform. Saltstack, Puppet, Chef, Ansible, etc., are examples of these kinds of tools.
Lastly, only knowing all tools may not suffice without adequate knowledge of where to use the tools.
Conclusion
As organizations are embracing DevOps models to speed up the delivery of software applications and enhance security, the future of DevOps or DevOps jobs look bright. You can start off your career with a certification in a basic DevOps course, which you can later top up with a master’s program. However, DevOps certificates vary in status and credibility. Therefore, those certifications that got accredited by the tech giants or relevant tech bodies carry maximum currency.
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