DevOps, or Development and Operations, is the latest rage in the IT industry. It is the combination of all the required traits that enable a company to deliver its services at a high velocity.
In the US alone, there are more than 11,029 DevOps engineers. If you’re also planning to work in IT and know more about DevOps, here are some required skill sets.
1. Ability to communicate and collaborate
One of the most important skills for DevOps engineers is understanding information and relaying it to team members.
Good communication skills are necessary for any field of life, but it has an entirely different importance in DevOps.
Along with this, you also need to know how to collaborate with people to come up with good ideas.
Since the IT industry requires a lot of team projects and group efforts, you don’t have any choice but to work closely with other people. In this situation, clear and open communication with good cooperation skills will help.
2. Strong technical skills
Of course, a DevOps engineer also needs to know basic computer programs like Linux Fundamentals, Cloud operations, and Automation Skills.
For various automation tasks, Linux is the most preferred platform, so make sure you know how to work effortlessly in Linux.
Other than that, you should also have a fair idea about security skills to ensure that all the systems and data in the company are protected. Even technical support and maintenance skills are important.
3. Good soft skills
Along with technical skills, it’s also required for any DevOps engineer to understand the importance of soft skills like flexibility, curiosity, and self-motivation.
Remember, when you work in an industry as dynamic as IT, it becomes really important to place importance on hard work and improvement.
Your DevOps work will involve stakeholder discussions, awareness of business goals, and timely submission of reports. You can ace all of these if your soft skills are strong.
4. Continuous integration and testing
Continuous integration tools are those which can automatically build and detect code changes. Continuous integration’s main purpose is to ensure that any code changes are integrated into the main codebase without any hassle.
Continuous testing, on the other hand, is the group of tools that test the code changes.
You have to know how to use both these tools and where it’s appropriate to use them. Then, learn how to monitor the required systems and applications so that you can detect problems early on.
5. Expertise in coding skills
Coding and scripting are, again, two tools that any DevOps engineer MUST master. Among coding languages, you have to be nimble with Python, Java, and Javascript. PHP and Node.js, to name a few.
It might take a lot of months for you to know properly about these languages, so enroll in crash courses on one or two coding sessions.
While offline courses can help you to learn more quickly, online ones are more affordable and flexible.
6. Knowledge of proactive monitoring
As the name suggests, proactive monitoring is the ability to prevent problems from taking place by being proactive.
Reactive monitoring means simply searching the systems for any signs of trouble, but proactive monitoring is more important.
You have to use predictive analytics to take care of any potential threats to your system.
By taking the correct steps, you can prevent outages and disruptions and even improve the overall quality of the system you’re handling.
7. Customer-based approach
Customer satisfaction should be one of the most important checklists in any DevOps engineer’s mind.
A customer-centric approach will help you stand out among the crowd of other engineers and ensure that you work hard to improve yourself and the system.
Whenever you study a new topic, or you’re faced with a problem, your end goal should always be to solve the customer’s problem and deliver them only the best product or service.
Over to you…
As a DevOps engineer, there will be a lot of times when you might feel confused about the best approach for problems.
In order to eliminate any problems, keep learning, attend as many workshops as possible, and take help from a mentor. And you will eventually master the skill sets of DevOps engineering!