Agile development effectively reduces development time, thereby increasing communication between the development team and business stakeholders. However, software projects do not accomplish with the last line of code or with the last test. You need to package them for release, deploy them into production, monitor for troubles, and enhance them with bug fixes and new features.
Due to the delayed time of the post-development tasks, it takes longer to provide business functionality to users. DevOps draws agile focus on communication and association between the developers & operations team which has resolved this issue. It provides the post-code software process with the same responsiveness as the coding process.
However, you must have probably noticed that a majority of the industry’s technical buzz has lately been centered around one of the three giant areas namely, Cloud Computing, NoSQL, and DevOps. These three are all about how systems are built and operated.
Among the above-mentioned technologies, DevOps has been on the rise off lately as a newly re-defined standalone discipline. You can get many shreds of evidence in several articles.
Statista provides the statistics in regard to how many software developers around the globe have adopted DevOps in their workplace in 2017 and 2018, on the basis of a survey conducted by development professionals.
Before we move on to know the skills of a DevOps engineer, let us understand what kind of these experts are and what they need to have.
What is a DevOps engineer?
A DevOps expert should be fluent in the following areas:
- They should be efficient in deployment automation, and networks
- Understand software licensing
- They should be wise in the ways of hardware and software
- They should be able to work with multiple operating systems
- Write scripts in various languages to build reports and automate tasks
If you are planning your next DevOps project, then you need to consider the following tips while doing so.
Top 10 skills of a DevOps engineer you should consider before hiring
#1 Understand QA Processes
QA (Quality Assurance) is an integral part of the development process of any project. It helps plan and control the entire process and prevents critical troubles that may arise during the execution or deployment. Moreover, a DevOps expert should be able to make an effective analysis at every stage of development and deployment in relevance to any bugs or errors to ensure the smooth functioning of the application.
#2 Virtualization and Sandboxing
Virtualization consists of extracting the underlying hardware or software and makes things less reliant and more remote. This concept refers to servers, networks, storage, desktops, and even applications.
Cheap and efficient sandboxing comes with virtualization. Sandboxing involves keeping a piece of software like a running program in an isolated box and then controlling what resources it can access and when. It is for security and testing as well. When providing security, it can stop the spreading of software vulnerabilities or system failures.
#3 Competent Generalist Sysadmins
It is crucial that a DevOps engineer should be able to understand the behavior of the software while deploying it and troubleshooting issues. Moreover, they should have an additional skill of knowing various programming languages, which can help in scripting or automation of routine tasks.
#4 Cloud Technologies and Hardware
Earlier, businesses used to own hardware to run their IT business or relevant IT transactions. However, today, big brands such as Amazon and Google rent out their hardware on a monthly rate that is a mere fraction of the original hardware cost.
Moreover, many businesses have started adopting the concept of renting hardware instead of purchasing it. It reduces many hardware setup and maintenance tasks by outsourcing them to dedicated teams. Moreover, it also accelerates the process of launching a business, evident product or offering instant dedicated trial setups to clients. It also allows you to focus on the business logic without spending time on setting up your own hardware.
A DevOps developer should be able to handle these things at their end with ease.
#5 Skilled Programming
A good DevOps engineer should be capable of being efficient in the following tasks.
- They should know how to develop large and robust applications
- They should be capable of writing high-quality code
- They should have the knowledge of tools, frameworks & libraries to use in the development process
- A good DevOps expert should be able to overcome obstacles effectively
#6 Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment
A DevOps project’s continuous integration is essential to keep mainline up to date. It means that the base branch of the project’s code is tracked in a version control system like Git. A DevOps engineer achieves it by merging all working copies into the mainline as often as a few times per or once per release.
Another stage of a DevOps application requires to have continuous delivery, which makes sure that its deployable working state is often produced by small increments. As a result, it assures you that you can deploy your application to production when your business is ready for it.
Finally, the stage of continuous deployment comes in your DevOps project. It consists of putting the app into production. Moreover, continuous integration and delivery are essential for the continuity of deployment.
#7 Monitoring
It is significant that a DevOps engineer should continuously keep monitoring the project at every stage of development. Several servers, services, databases, microservices, etc. act as the building blocks of an application. Therefore, it is essential for them to monitor the operability and availability of these components continuously.
A DevOps expert needs to perform the following tasks.
- Examine failures and find their causes
- Fix the crashes and restore functionality
- Take preventive measures in the relevance of failures in the future
- Plan all the details of internal reports and improve its documentation by incorporating notes, tips, and procedures related to the trouble mentioned
- Guide the product team to improve the code that causes these issues
- Aid the support team in explaining troubles in easy-to-understand words in blog posts and in support tickets
#8 Technical Expertise
A DevOps developer is expected to have the required technical expertise to architect DevOps-friendly infrastructure. They should be well-versed with every part, from development to deployment.
#9 Up to date
An ideal DevOps engineer has to upgrade themselves with emerging trends and technologies. Additionally, they have to have the knowledge in regard to Artifical Intelligence and Machine Learning, as these technologies can have a huge impact on DevOps as a whole in the coming years.
#10 IT Security
Security holds the topmost priority of any project for a business. A DevOps engineer has to look after various aspects of the development process. Therefore, they have to cultivate security awareness while working on the application.
Today, more and more industries have diverted towards implementing IT solutions in their businesses. As a result, the possibilities of cyber-attacks have also grown. Components including software, hardware, firmware, drivers, and business solutions are exposed to insecurity at high levels. Therefore, each of these elements needs to have protection and security monitoring. In this relevance, a DevOps developer is expected to be efficient at security, which can prove to be the best asset for the business.
Summing Up
With the growing needs of businesses for integrating DevOps into their trades, DevOps as a service has taken a significant rise. However, before you hire an expert, kindly, take a look at the skills we discussed above.
