DevOps Engineering is the newest field in the IT profession. It’s a high-demand, high-growth job opportunity that can provide lucrative career opportunities for people with the right set of skills.
In today’s article, I’m going to talk about what DevOps engineer does, how to become one, and how much DevOps engineers are paid.
Let’s begin!
What Does DevOps Engineer Do?
A DevOps engineer is someone who has knowledge about both development and operations, and it’s their responsibility to make sure an application runs smoothly across all stages of its life (development, testing, production).
They also help developers build deployable code by automating processes like configuration management or release engineering.
Tasks of DevOps Engineer
You might wonder what tasks you’d perform as a DevOps engineer? Well here are few examples of daily activities performed by a DevOps engineer.
Daily responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer are:
- Automate manual tasks;
- Implement continuous integration and deployment systems;
- Monitor the application’s performance in real time to detect any issues before end users do, etc.
Requirements of Becoming DevOps Engineer?
There are not any set-in-stone prerequisites to become a DevOps engineer but there are certain characteristics or qualities which every good developer should have.
DevOps Engineers typically have strong technical skills – DevOps Engineer should be able to understand the system architecture and configuration, know how an application is built.
They are usually familiar with programming languages like PHP or Python, Ruby on Rails, etc.
They also need soft skills- good communication abilities because they work closely with developers who can sometimes be difficult to communicate with non-technical staff members.
Other characteristics which every DevOp engineer should possess:
- A problem solver;
- Someone who has great attention to detail;
- Advanced troubleshooting techniques in their toolbox;
What Does It Take to Be Successful as a DevOps Engineer?
No experience is required for becoming a developer because you will learn on the job but there are some preferred prerequisites that employers look out for when they hire new talent including:
- Knowledge of Linux or Unix operating system;
- Understanding networking concepts like TCP/IP and OSI model (not necessary);
- Good communication skills (verbal and written) because sometimes developers can behave arrogantly which makes dealing with them difficult.
How Much Does a DevOps Engineer Earn?
The salary of DevOps engineer varies, depending on the company where he works and his skillset but overall it’s pretty high if you compare it to other IT jobs.
According to Payscale, the average annual pay for this role is around $120 000-140 000 per year with some companies paying up to even 200k annually which makes it one of the highest-paid tech jobs out there!
It might not sound like too much money at first glance, but consider that only experience matters when determining your salary as a developer.
Starting from 0 years of expertise development engineers can make more than 100k$/year in the USA or UK (it all depends on the company and location).
What does it take to get hired at the top companies?
According to Glassdoor, some of the best DevOps Engineer jobs are available in big tech corporations like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.
If we look at these job postings (and there’s always a dozen of them if not more), we can see that the basic requirement is: At least one year of experience as a DevOps engineer.
To put things into perspective – according to Indeed.com, the average salary for experienced software developers with proven knowledge is around $100k/year which means starting from this level on average annual pay increases by 50%.
And keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need formal university education! Many top companies hire DevOps engineers without a degree and it’s more than enough to learn on the job.
If you are looking for a job as DevOps Engineer, these are the most important things that matter:
- Good knowledge of Linux or Unix operating system;
- Understanding of programming languages like Python or Ruby (not necessary);
- Attention to detail;
- Excellent troubleshooting skills in your toolbox – If you can fix problems quickly – this is definitely an asset which will make recruiters sit up and pay attention because it saves time for both sides.
What About Certifications?
Well, there aren’t any tests required for becoming a DevOps engineer but if you are looking for more formal education in this area, there are few popular options.
If you prefer online learning – there’s one of the most comprehensive courses available on Udemy.
It covers all basic principles and practices which is very important because when applying to work at corporations like Google or Amazon they will ask tough questions regarding your experience so it might come in handy!
This course costs only $49 with unlimited access to lectures & materials.
Other training option that IT professionals can choose from:
DevOps Fundamentals class offered by Linux Foundation (it’s FREE!). Here’s what each course consists of according to the official website :
- Introduction To Continuous Delivery;
- What is Continuous Integration;
- Introduction to CentOS / Linux;
- Git Basics;
And of course, there are many other options available so you can definitely find one that suits your needs!
But remember – hands-on experience is more important than formal education. Getting hired by big corporations will only be possible if you show off what you know on practical examples and prove them with action rather than just writing it down in the resume.
DevOps Engineer Tools
1. The ones that do not require physical access to the server
The most popular among them is the Docker tool which allows you to deploy, manage and test applications without changing your OS or containers on physical servers.
This means that there is no need for virtualization software like VirtualBox or VMware, which makes it great for remote users!
All you need is Docker installed on your computer (Windows, macOS) and start using simple commands to run any application on any OS images.
Also, some examples of cloud tools are Ansible, Puppet, Chef, and Vagrant – they allow you to automate provisioning systems with one command line call which saves a lot of time and makes your work more efficient and reliable!
There are many others like GitLab, Jira, or Confluence which can be used to manage the project development process.
2. Tools that require physical access
One common example here is the Jenkins tool which allows creating a Continuous Integration pipeline on Linux servers and deploys new code as soon as developers commit changes into the source control system, thus allowing automated integration, testing, and deployment of code.
Another very useful tool is Ansible which allows you to automate management tasks on Servers like restarting Apache or Nginx web servers without any manual intervention! Every DevOps engineer should know how to use it since this task comes up quite often in everyday job routine.
3. Programming languages
They are not DevOps tools in the strictest sense but still, they are an essential part of every domain so knowing them will definitely help you to become a better engineer!
One very popular tool among developers is Python because it allows us to automate all kinds of tasks like sending emails, web crawling or even generate reports (using libraries like Pandas for data analysis).
Another useful language that can be used both on the frontend and backend side is JavaScript which has a huge community behind it with thousands of different modules available on the NPM repository.
It’s also possible to use JS as a transpiler since many modern frameworks support only newer ECMAScript versions (starting from ES2015) while your development environment may still use an older version.
As for the backend side, the most popular choice is Go which allows you to create statically linked binaries that can run on any system without installing libraries or other dependencies (it’s compiled into machine code).
It has only one drawback – it requires more time to write since you need to manage pointers manually and deal with allocating memory yourself.
But once your program starts using a certain amount of memory it will be much faster than Python counterpart!
If speed is important for you this programming language might be a good alternative because managers usually choose the fastest solutions like in the case of the DevOps Engineer job position.
Conclusion
We hope that you’ll find this article useful. We talked about DevOps engineer, what it is, how much do they earn, and how to become one.
You can leave us a comment with any questions or ideas too, we always appreciate feedback from our readers.
FAQ
The answer is no, they do not require you to code. DevOps will use a variety of different skillsets and qualities.
DevOps salaries range from $90,000 to $120,000 on annual basis.
A DevOps Engineer is someone who is tasked with bridging the gap between Development and Operations, or more specifically, making sure code changes can be deployed to production servers.
