Upskilling has become a norm in the job market right now. There are hundreds of skills out there that are waiting to be acquired. A proper combination of these skills can be the perfect stairway to lead you to your dream career. This is true about DevOps, too.
Just like every other job role, there are a handful of technical and non-technical skills that companies look for when hiring a DevOps professional. And, although they aren’t that hard to acquire, they are extensive and require a bit of work from your end.
But before we delve into these skills, let’s first understand what DevOps is. DevOps, at its core, is a methodology or an approach that combines the development units of a software development lifecycle with their operations counterparts. Hence the name ‘Dev,’ ‘Ops.’ The idea here is to promote continuous integration, deployment, and delivery to increase the overall coordination between the different parts of an organization. This not only makes the system more efficient, it also reduces the delivery time and allows continuous monitoring as well.
Now that you have a good understanding of DevOps, let’s talk about the five major skills every DevOps professional needs to master to get into his dream career.
Linux Fundamentals and Scripting
Most DevOps tools which are being widely used in the industry right now have their master nodes on Linux. These includes tools like Chef, Puppet and Ansible. Other than this, majority of the companies working on the DevOps methodology have their environment on Linux. Because of this, learning the basics of Linux is essential for any aspiring DevOps professional.
Provisioning infrastructure, continuous monitoring and integration and several other jobs in a DevOps environment require automation. This automation is done using scripting languages like Python, Ruby, Perl etc. So, to score a DevOps job role, you need to know at least one of these scripting languages.
DevOps Tools and Technologies
If you look at a workplace built over DevOps, you can observe that there are several different and distinct tools being used for different activities. DevOps workflows can be largely divided into three stages—development, testing and operations. In most cases, each of these stages is handled by a different team or professional, but it is essential for any DevOps professional to be familiar with all the tools being utilized.
A basic set of tools used in any DevOps environment is as follows:
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a type of IT infrastructure that allows the operations teams to automatically manage and provision code, instead of using a manual process. Another name for this approach is programmable infrastructure as it aims at automating through programming.
There are several tools in the market that can be used for this task. These include Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and many more. For anyone aspiring to score a role in any DevOps workflow, IAC is a solid requirement.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
The main aim of a DevOps cycle is to promote the quality of the product. This is achieved by two approaches introduced in the Agile methodology—continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD).
Just know how to use the different DevOps tools is not enough. A DevOps professional should know how to utilize these tools to achieve CI and CD. Continuous deployment is another step that is considered in many cases. The below diagram can help you assess the difference between these three steps:
Soft Skills
Let’s face it, almost all job requirements nowadays require a professional to have good and proven soft skills. These could include communication skills, writing skills, reporting skills and a host of other non-technical abilities.
This fact is true about the DevOps job roles as well. As a DevOps environment involves several different professionals and teams, communication and reported are of apex important. As a DevOps professional, you might also be expected to cultivate positive relationships with customers and clients. You will also need to be quick on your toes in terms of problem solving and negotiating.
These were five major skills companies look for in a DevOps professional. As you may have realized, most of these are hard skills which can easily be learnt overtime. If you aspire to get into any DevOps role, learning these skills would be your best bet.
In case you are still confused about where to start and how to acquire these skills, why not take up an online DevOps course which is curated by subject matter experts? This will not only make it easier for you to learn, but you will be taught by industry practitioners which is the best practice in learning.
