What Does a DevOps Engineer Do? A 2024 Career Guide

DevOps engineers specialize in development and operations processes to coordinate efficient product development for a company. DevOps engineers also oversee the activities and needs of a software product’s creation from planning to deployment. However, these roles are less important (if not obsolete) with the use of strategies like automated testing and dark deployments.

A DevOps Engineer’s role requires technical skills in the development cycle and operations skills for maintenance and support. Computer Science or Computer Technology graduates can bring some of the technical skills necessary to become a DevOps engineer. However, the skills required for managing the operations usually come through the experience or by enrolling in specific development programs, which can help further the career devops engineer training in the set direction. DevOps teams use short feedback loops with customers and end users to develop products and services centered around user needs. DevOps practices enable rapid collection and response to user feedback through use of real-time live monitoring and rapid deployment. Teams get immediate visibility into how live users interact with a software system and use that insight to develop further improvements.

DevOps

DevOps is a business practice where development, IT operations, and security teams partner to build, test, and provide regular feedback throughout the entire SDLC. DevOps teams monitor the entire development lifecycle — from planning, development, integration and testing, deployment, and operations. This allows teams to respond to any degradation in the customer experience, quickly and automatically. More importantly, it allows teams to “shift left” to earlier stages in development and minimize broken production changes. Agile is an iterative approach to project management and software development that helps teams break work into smaller pieces to deliver incremental value. DevOps engineering offers a multitude of career paths and opportunities for specialization.

At Simplilearn, we have developed comprehensive DevOps skill development programs to upskill future engineers. The video below will help you understand the basics of DevOps, who is a DevOps engineer and career roadmap for a DevOps engineer. DevOps engineer candidates are often expected to have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, IT, software engineering or a similar field.

DevOps and DevSecOps

When an organization is rooted in a siloed structure where development and operations work separately, implementing DevOps often entails an organizational overhaul. Yet one of the most common hurdles to implementing DevOps is a lack of skills in employees, according to Atlassian’s 2020 DevOps Trends Survey. This principle involves understanding the needs of customers and creating products or services that solve real problems. Teams shouldn’t ‘build in a bubble’, or create software based on assumptions about how consumers will use the software.

• By automating processes used in application maintenance and management, DevOps engineers enable seamless operations between different processes and development stages.
• Cross-team collaboration is a fundamental component of an effective DevOps strategy, regardless of the specific organizational structure.
• Operations teams keep an eye on releases with monitoring tools that measure performance and monitor the impact of code changes.
• Quickly identify and resolve issues that impact product uptime, speed, and functionality.
• DevOps is a practice that requires a cultural change, new management principles, and the use of technology tools.

DevOps engineers are instrumental in bridging the gap between development and operations teams, facilitating collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement throughout the software delivery lifecycle. This article explores some of the key tools and technologies utilized by DevOps engineers in their daily workflows. A DevOps engineer is an IT professional who works with software developers, systems operators and other production IT staff to oversee code releases and deployments. DevOps is a methodology that has evolved from the experience and best practices of managing the development, testing, and support processes in a software development project life cycle. These practices help organizations manage the development, tools deployment, integrated testing, and assistance with increased productivity and speed.

DevOps Engineer Education and Experience

This is a DevOps expert who promotes and develops DevOps practices across the organization. The DevOps evangelist will typically have a strong technical background, but the focus of the role is on interpersonal communication and process improvement. Since using the right tools are essential to DevOps practices, the DevOps engineer must understand, and be able to use, a variety of tools. These tools span the DevOps lifecycle from infrastructure and building, to monitoring and operating a product or service. Continuous deployment refers to automatically sending the changes made by a developer from the repository to production, where end-users can use it. Here, we’ll explore how DevOps engineers benefit software teams and the overall organization.

An essential practice of DevOps is to automate as much of the software development lifecycle as possible. Automation is a key element of a CI/CD pipeline and helps to reduce human errors and increase team productivity. With automated processes, teams achieve continuous improvement with short iteration times, which allows them to quickly respond to customer feedback. DevSecOps builds on DevOps by integrating automated security testing into every part of DevOps culture, tooling, and processes. This helps developers find and address security vulnerabilities as they code instead of waiting for security teams to address them after deployment.

DevOps products

This all occurred while IT worked on a subsequent patch or iteration of the product, which they had no knowledge or input about. When an update arrived from the development team, this slow and painful cycle simply repeated itself, handing off the new code to IT and letting Operations deal with deployment and its aftermath. DevOps engineers use a variety of tools from all disciplines and methodologies to help maintain a consistent workflow between development and operations teams. These tools help them resolve issues as they arise and help prevent certain issues with simple automations. A DevOps Engineer should be skilled, knowledgeable, and capable of automating the entire DevOps pipeline, including application performance monitoring, CI/CD cycles, infrastructure and configuration management, and many others.

The term DevOps, a combination of the words development and operations, reflects the process of integrating these disciplines into one, continuous process. DevOps is a set of practices, tools, and a cultural philosophy that automate and integrate the processes between software development and IT teams. It emphasizes team empowerment, cross-team communication and collaboration, and technology automation. Other duties of a DevOps engineer may include coding, automation, security, and infrastructure management. This program is most suitable for learners aspiring for the role and responsibilities of senior DevOps engineers and above. Additionally, it brings various technical benefits such as continuous delivery, early detection and correction of problems, and easy management of the project.

Improved productivity

They must thoroughly understand basic programming languages, such as Java, Python, JavaScript, PHP, Shell, Node.js, Bash, Ruby, and more. They must also have experience in Linux as the developers continue to use it even to this day. DevOps engineers are responsible for selecting, implementing, and managing a wide array of tools and technologies that comprise the DevOps toolchain. Mastery of popular DevOps tools such as Jenkins, Git, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and Prometheus opens doors to career advancement and specialization. DevOps engineers can become subject matter experts (SMEs) in specific tools or platforms, contributing to tool development, consulting, or training roles within organizations or as independent consultants.

Regardless of fault, much of the application’s development may have to start over at square one. Say a product was in the final stages of its development, with great design and features that were easy to use. But, as the teams were about to pop the bubbly, they discovered a security vulnerability in the database.

Additionally, DevOps engineers should be able to design and manage infrastructures that are located on-premise, as well as those in the cloud. A DevOps Engineer plays an important role in the DevOps lifecycle by continuously managing team communications and designing and implementing strategies. In this process, code is built, tested, and deployed to test in production environments. CD systems are also used for automated release processes and fixes to existing software. Operations teams keep an eye on releases with monitoring tools that measure performance and monitor the impact of code changes. They ensure stability and uptime, gather customer feedback, and stay in close contact with developers to push required fixes and address incidents faster.