DevOps Engineer Job Description: Roles and Responsibilities You Need to Handle

Teams entrenched in siloed ways of working can struggle with, or even be resistant to, overhauling team structures to embrace DevOps practices. Everyone on a DevOps team must understand the entire value stream — from ideation, to development, to the end user experience. It requires breaking down silos in order to collaborate throughout the product lifecycle.

Jenkins, a popular open-source CI/CD tool, automates the entire software delivery pipeline, from code compilation to testing to deployment. The technical skills required of a DevOps engineer will vary depending on the team structure, technologies, and toolsets in use. It’s also important for a DevOps engineer to have a solid understanding of all the components of a delivery pipeline, and to know the pros and cons of available tools and services. DevOps is a cultural shift where teams embrace a software engineering culture, workflow, and toolset that elevates operational requirements to the same level of importance as architecture, design, and development. When developers who build software also run it, they have a greater understanding of user requirements and needs.

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DevOps engineers will often be expected to have experience with one or more configuration management tools such as Chef, Puppet, or Ansible. Many organizations have adopted these or similar tools to automate system administration tasks such as deploying new systems or applying security patches to systems already running. Release engineering includes the work required to build and deploy application code. Release engineering might entail selecting, provisioning, and maintaining CI/CD tooling or writing and maintaining bespoke build/deploy scripts.

At the same time, they bring the critical elements of continuous integration and continuous deployment to the DevOps engineer’s sole responsibility. Due to its enormous potential benefits, many organizations are either providing their employees with a reliable Devops course or encouraging them to take one up to implement these practices in their day-to-day activities. In today’s fast-paced tech world, DevOps engineers play a crucial role in streamlining software delivery and fostering collaboration between development and operations teams.

DevOps Engineer Job Description: Skills, Roles and Responsibilities

Consider them to be the symphony conductors, bringing the various components of the software development lifecycle into harmony. DevOps is a practice that requires a cultural change, new management principles, and the use of technology tools. A DevOps engineer lies at the heart of a DevOps transformation and must have a broad set of skills to facilitate this change. Yet most organizations will need more than just one DevOps engineer, but a mix of generalists and specialists to work closely with each other to implement DevOps and improve the software development lifecycle.

Git’s branching and merging capabilities make it indispensable for managing codebases efficiently. A DevOps engineer optimizes an organization’s software delivery process to enable collaboration and innovation. Keep reading to learn more about what DevOps engineers do and what skills they rely on. When an organization is rooted in a siloed structure where development and operations work separately, implementing DevOps often entails an organizational overhaul.

SRE vs DevOps: key differences explained

Organizations that have not transitioned to DevOps or are still in the early stages of doing so might have a separate group called the change advisory board (CAB) or an individual release manager role. Other common names for a release manager are a release engineer or a product stability manager. Formal documentation enables engineers to record new features, source code, system requirements, design instructions, bug fixes, tool guides, response plans, etc. Our article about the different cloud monitoring tools analyzes and compares the best options on the market. The lack of recurring tasks keeps the staff happy, while pipelines become more stable and efficient. Learn the difference between Agile and DevOps, two development methodologies that lead to better products.

Most DevOps engineers possess a strong software development or IT operations background, along with a mix of other technical skills and soft skills from other disciplines. These skillsets may include knowledge of programming languages, proficiency with automation tools, interpersonal skills, and analytical problem solving. Other duties of a DevOps engineer may include coding, automation, security, and infrastructure management.

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Knowledge of scripting, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), OS administration, and Git workflows is common among DevOps engineers. An experienced recruiter and HR professional who has transferred her expertise to insightful content to support others in HR. Coursera’s editorial team is comprised of highly experienced professional editors, writers, and fact… Dinko Dinev was able to land a new job in Germany with a staggerring 100% hike in his salary after completing the Post Graduate Program in DevOps.

Many traditional system administrators have experience writing shell scripts to automate repetitive tasks. A DevOps engineer should go beyond writing automation scripts and understand advanced software development practices and how to implement agile development practices such as code reviews and using source control. This person must possess a wide ranging skill set that spans both development and operations, but also the interpersonal skills to bridge divides between siloed teams. Their responsibilities and objectives are centered on managing the development life cycle, reducing the complexity of the development process, and helping make applications more reliable.

This makes teams more efficient and saves time related to work handoffs and creating code that is designed for the environment where it runs. Continuous integration (CI) allows multiple developers to contribute to a single shared repository. When code changes are merged, automated tests are run to ensure correctness before integration. Merging and testing code often help development teams gain reassurance in the quality and predictability of code once deployed.

The easiest way to get started with DevOps is to identify a small value stream (for example a small supporting app or service) and start experimenting with some DevOps practices. As with software development, it is far easier to transform a single stream with a small group of stakeholders than to attempt an all-at-once organizational transition to a new way of working. As a DevOps Engineer, you will be responsible for the design, development, testing, and deployment of products that help companies communicate with their customers in deep and personal ways.

It allows developers to frequently merge code changes into a central repository where builds and tests are executed. This helps DevOps teams address bugs quicker, improve software quality, and reduce the devops engineer training time it takes to validate and release new software updates. The foundation of DevOps is a culture of collaboration between developers and operations teams, who share responsibilities and combine work.

• By embracing this mindset, you’ll be well-equipped to navigate the ever-changing tech landscape and drive innovation in your organization.
• Practices like continuous integration and continuous delivery ensure changes are functional and safe, which improves the quality of a software product.
• Leadership roles offer opportunities to mentor junior team members, influence organizational transformation, and drive innovation at scale.
• As you gain experience and expertise, you might consider starting your own DevOps consulting business or offering freelance services.
• Software delivery that is efficient and runs smoothly is made possible by DevOps engineers.