In recent years, for tech companies, DevOps has been a buzzword among a variety of businesses. As per the research reports, going with the DevOps principle has resulted in 46 times more software deliveries than the competitors. Hiring DevOps Engineers has also resulted in 96 times faster failure recovery and fasten rates of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, etc.
These positive results are making more businesses invest in hiring DevOps Engineers. According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, this growth and demand for hiring DevOps Engineers are expected to grow by 7% until 2026.
Enterprises like Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Walmart, and many more renowned names are increasingly using DevOps Engineers. It will ensure rapid and consistent delivery of software and security updates for their own team and customers too. Such demands and dependence are setting a path for small and medium enterprises to opt for hiring DevOps Engineers.
Well, to become a DevOps Engineer or hiring DevOps Engineer, is quite a challenging task in itself. Because the Deployment Pipelines, Systems Architecture, Incident Management, and other technologies are continually evolving and are constantly challenging DevOps Engineers to get a grab over it. This shows that a DevOps Engineer has to be curious, motivated, and intelligent at the same time.
Source: Medium Website
DevOps is a very tough role to play irrespective of with which company you are associated with. But it is one of the ideal jobs which can take you towards a great working environment and ultimately a handsome salary package too.
If you are thinking about pursuing a career as a DevOps Engineer or looking to hire DevOps Engineers, to reinforce your IT organization, then no need to look anywhere else.
In this blog, I am going to share with you the 10 best skills a good DevOps Engineer must possess to get hired by any company and have a brilliantly successful career. Without delay, let’s start learning the important skills which must have to be considered while hiring DevOps Engineers.
10 Best Skills for Hiring DevOps Engineers
The primary objective of any DevOps Engineer is to verify the codes before its release. For this, he had to work with Software Developers, Testers, System Operators, etc. to deliver accurate results. So, to achieve all these things for a single person requires a set of skills that one must possess. Without much ado, let’s take a look over 10 best skills for hiring DevOps Engineers in detail.
Source: RawPixel Website
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Soft Skills and Strong Communication Skills
DevOps jobs are a combination of lots of skills and require too much communication to manage operation and development simultaneously. Hence, proper communication and collaboration are the vital skills that make or break DevOps in any organization.
- A DevOps Engineer is one who breaks down the vault between the development and operations teams. He is the one responsible for building connections and removing bottlenecks between different teams. All these barriers can only be broken by talking to people and DevOps Engineer is the responsible person to do so, and make sure the smooth development operation and timely delivery.
- A DevOps Engineer is the accountable person to assess and streamline the goals of Dev and Ops team to ensure achieving the common goals with flawless customer experience.
- All organizations and their working culture are different, so it is difficult to instill DevOps Values and culture. For this, the DevOps Engineer is required to communicate and collaborate with every individual and team. Here, he had to explain and educate the teams about what DevOps is, what are DevOps principles, and DevOps tools.
While hiring DevOps Engineers, do learn about such qualities of the candidates. If you find that he is not or can’t be a good people person, then I would recommend that he/she might not be the best fit for you and your organization.
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Empathy and Unselfishness
For a DevOps Engineer, both Soft Skills and Hard Skills are equally important. None can be neglected while hiring DevOps Engineers. The DevOps not only have to be good coders and fast in automation but also possess the quality of soft skills such as empathy, curiosity, flexibility, and self-motivation.
In soft skills, nothing can beat empathy and unselfish nature. These DevOps skills help to understand what others feel and make DevOps Engineers always keep other’s well-being above theirs. A good DevOps Engineer should be not only a good speaker but also a good lister too.
Make sure to learn about the previous working style and strategies followed by the DevOps Engineer before hiring. Because a good DevOps Engineer will first analyze and learn about the company’s requirements, and understand how the company runs. The Engineer will initially also learn about the working culture of the new organization.
If the candidate possesses Empathy and Unselfishness, then they will definitely be a good choice and I recommend such a candidate to be hired as a DevOps Engineer in your organization.
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Knowledge of Major DevOps Tools
There are a significant number of DevOps tools available in the market, and it is not possible for an individual to master them all, it even doesn’t make any sense as well. Positively, the DevOps Engineer doesn’t have to do so.
But it would be great if one has expertise over a few familiar and major DevOps Tools. The following DevOps Tools are a major plus point and help to analyze the best candidate for your organization.
The DevOps work is executed on various stages, and each stage has separate tools to work out efficiently. The main stages are as follows;
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Source Code Management
Under this stage, the tools allow DevOps Engineers to create and modify the software codes whenever the need arises. The Source Code Management Tools are used to store the codes, merge the new codes with the existing codes, control the version of code, etc. The most commonly used Source Code Management Tools are Git, GitHub, and GitLab.
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Configuration Management
Configuration Management Tools are used to keep track of the Operating System and Software Configuration. It eases the process of configuring management on thousands of servers. This tool requires a remote connection to the target server and push configuration changes and making things easier to handle. The top quality of Configuration Management Tools is Puppet, Ansible, and Chef.
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Continuous Integration (CI)
Continuous Integration is a process to automate the integration of codes from different developers in the form of a single piece of software. For Continuous Integration, the most popular tools used by the majority of DevOps Engineers are Jenkins and Bamboo.
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Continuous Testing
Continuous Testing is basically the process to reduce the feedback waiting time after testing of code. The codes are tested under the development environment by using automation testing tools. The most commonly used tools for Continuous Testing are TestComplete, TestingWhiz, and Selenium.
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Continuous Monitoring
DevOps perform continuous monitoring to analyze application performance, error logs, downtimes, etc. The familiar tools used for Continuous Monitoring are Zabbix, Splunk, and Nagios.
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Containerization
Containerization is the process of virtualization of an Operating System. It makes sure that different containers running different applications can use the same operating system and resources in sharing. The top tools providers for containerization are Vagrants, Kubernetes, and Docker.
DevOps is continuously evolving. To ensure that the skills of the DevOps Engineer are up to mark and to have the grab over the latest technology, then it would be a great candidate for the organization. If DevOps is not having command over the latest technologies, then it is the time for them to learn something new and is not recommended to hire DevOps Engineers with limited skills and expertise.
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Software Security Skills
One of the primary goals of DevOps is to release codes faster. Eventually, the faster release of codes leads to vulnerability. For a Software Application, data and security breach has always been the biggest threat. Therefore, the DevOps Engineers make sure to save the application from any kind of external intrusion.
These intrusions could vary from SQL injections, XSS attacks to unrecognized attacks. Not always humans are the only source of threat arousal. The security pitfalls could also have arisen in the application itself. For all such issues and threats, the DevOps Engineer needs to be aware of or predict in advance.
A trained DevOps Engineer in software security skills will be a great choice. The one who can maintain the security of the system. One who can not only fix security issues in code; but can predict and eliminate them from the start.
Therefore, when looking to hire a DevOps Engineer, then make sure during the interview that the candidate is skilled in maintaining the security of the new and the existing system simultaneously.
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Command of Automation Technologies and Tools
Another key element of DevOps is Automation. No company can think of DevOps Engineers without thinking of Automation. Several manual tasks are performed on more traditional system administrator and engineering roles. Such manual tasks can be automated by using Shell, Python, Bash.
The Automation technologies allow DevOps Engineers to ensure consistent performance. It also saves a lot of time for DevOps Engineers which they can utilize on other important goals.
Though the DevOps Engineer needs to be an experienced person in using and implementing automation tools and technologies. So make sure while hiring DevOps Engineers, they are having the working knowledge of tools such as Terraform, PowerShell, and Chef. These tools enable infrastructure automation.
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Coding and Scripting Skills
A DevOps Engineer doesn’t need to be an expert in coding. So, more than coding, scripting skills are required and are much recommended for this job. Therefore, DevOps Engineers should be aware of the fundamentals of Linux and having knowledge of at least one or more scripting languages.
A majority of companies are preferring Linux for hosting their Applications. So, one must have the skills of handling the Linux Operating System to become a competent DevOps Engineer. In addition to this, many configuration management tools are having their master nodes running on Linux. The most familiar Configuration Management Tools are Chef, Ansible, and Puppet. You can read more about the DevOps Tools.
So, when you look to hire DevOps Engineers, then the qualified candidate must have the skills to handle and scripting language and have a good handle on Python, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, Bash, PHP, Node.js, and Shell. Well, the candidate should not be knowing every language, but knowledge over one or more than one is a great benefit for any DevOps Engineer.
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Cloud Skills
Knowledge of the Cloud is not only beneficial for hiring DevOps Engineers but also for Software Developers. For many organizations, working on clouds has been a major part of DevOps culture. Together Clouds and DevOps possess the great potential to provide high speed and agility to the business.
The use of Cloud can serve the following 5 benefits for the business under the DevOps culture.
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Easy Automation
We have learned above about automation technologies. Cloud is among one of the features to make automation easier.
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Cloud-Server Replication
Cloud makes it easier for developers and DevOps to have the backup of their activities, and it is possible with cloud service. However, initially, you have to start the server and then restore the backup on different environments.
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Effective Monitoring
Most Cloud Services ease the work of DevOps by providing the tools to monitor the applications.
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Orchestration
It is a special way of automation and provides excellent coordination and control over automation. It covers the complete hierarchy of the infrastructure. Some renowned and majorly used Orchestration Tools are Ansible, Chef, and Puppet.
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Rapid Deployment
The Cloud service provides many tools to deploy the application faster.
These above benefits of Cloud Service and working knowledge of cloud technology are the vital part for the success of any enterprise and skills are required to consider while hiring DevOps Engineers.
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Testing Skills
Automation is only possible with proper Testing, and since automation is the backbone of DevOps, strong Testing skills are mandatory when you look to hire DevOps Engineers.
When proper Testing at its place, you can make yourself comfortable that each function is performing what it was written to do. Knowing how to practice Testing properly and implement it at every stage of development. It is an important and necessary practise for DevOps Engineers to ensure all the functions are performing properly what it ought to do. At each stage starting from the development to deployment, the Testing is required to make sure that the complete system is enriched with new features and is working perfectly.
Testing in a DevOps environment means a lot; therefore, the top-performing DevOps organizations like Netflix and Amazon are using performance testing, automation regression, security testing, and load. Their goal is to deliver software quality in the DevOps pipeline. To ensure such quality of work, it is obvious to hire DevOps Engineers who are equipped and highly skilled in performing testing too.
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Customer-Centric Mindset
DevOps Engineers’ role is not typically external-facing work, whereas, developers, QA, Project Management, custom success, and business leaders all are their clients. As a result, the DevOps Engineer used to juggle his work among operations, development, and product team, and has the ability to prioritize tasks, empathize, and be transparent in work are his key-skills.
A good DevOps Engineer always makes sure to deliver quality and value to the end-user. For this, the DevOps generate tangible results for the organization’s business. The DevOps Engineers are the responsible entity that analyzes how their own and the organization’s work can be enhanced and improved to deliver value rapidly.
Overall, while hiring DevOps Engineers make sure how engaging and dedicated the person is to take the organization’s business ahead. The DevOps should have to engage with the team and to the customers and clients to generate good results. So, a good DevOps Engineers’ responsibility is to make sure to resolve all the queries not only of customers or end-users but also of clients and the whole team.
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Passion and Proactivity
A DevOps Engineer needs to be passionate about the work in terms of enhancing skills, team management, communication, problem-solving, and many others. With all such qualities and proactivity, nature will not deliver good results for the company but make DevOps a good team player and boost a level of energy too.
As mentioned above, loving your job will naturally reflect your happiness at the workplace. It will directly or indirectly impact the performance and productivity of not only DevOps but also of the whole team. So, the more meaningful results you produce, the more valuable asset you will become for the company.
However, no matter how talented or experienced the DevOps Engineer is, make sure while hiring DevOps Engineers that the person is willing and enthusiastic to learn a lot on a daily basis. For Example, new technologies, new tools, new cloud offerings, and many more to make sure the smooth flow of work in the organization.
Being a DevOps Engineer should approach these things proactively and passionately, and make sure to achieve results on time. Passion and proactivity are considered as the safe road to take towards the path of being an authority for an efficient DevOps Engineer. These features also help DevOps Engineers to become an individual identity and also build a trust and comfort level with the complete team.
Conclusion
Well…I would say, hiring DevOps Engineers or to become a DevOps Engineer is not any rocket science. Overall, it requires a lot of hard work, dedication, and possesses hard and soft skills.
DevOps Engineers should be well equipped in technologies, tools, managing infrastructure in the cloud, writing security codes, and automation testing. The individual should be passionate about work and always ready to deliver the work on time with an enormous amount of value in it.
While hiring DevOps Engineers for your organization, these are the 10 mandatory points that needs to be considered.
Source: RawPixel Website
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