The demand for skilled DevOps engineers is rapidly going up with each passing day. It isn’t surprising in the least that a lot of people are working to grasp this great opportunity. As a consequence, the field is getting pretty competitive.
So, you may wonder, how can you get an edge over the competition? Well, companies want a skilled engineer first and foremost. Which leads you to the question – What are the skills required for DevOps engineer? I will answer it in this article.
In case you don’t know what DevOps is, let me give a brief explanation before I begin with what skills required for DevOps are:
DevOps stands for Development Operations. DevOps is an approach that integrates development and IT teams using DevOps practices and tools, allowing them to collaborate efficiently and effectively.
Before you can understand what skills are required for DevOps engineer, you will need to know the prerequisites.
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Prerequisites of a DevOps Engineer
- Knowledge of programming languages is a must. Python and Java, among others, are some of the essential ones to know the basics of.
- A DevOps engineer should be well-versed with the concept of networking.
- A grasp of testing tools and applications is also important. A DevOps engineer should be able to identify bugs and debug them at any stage of development.
- Cloud skills are one of the technical skills required for DevOps engineer. Without them, a DevOps engineer wouldn’t be able to provide a centralized platform to the various teams.
List of Skills Required to Become a DevOps Engineer
In this section, you will finally learn the answer to the question “What are the skills required for DevOps engineer?”
While the prerequisites provide you with some of the technical skills required for DevOps engineer, they aren’t enough. As I mentioned earlier, companies need a skilled DevOps engineer.
For companies to prefer you over the other candidates, you need to have a bigger and better skillset. Here are some of the skills required for a DevOps engineer:
Thorough Understanding of DevOps Tools
Unsurprisingly, a DevOps engineer should know how to use the prominent DevOps tools. There are a lot of tools on the market, but you shouldn’t stress about knowing all of them.
Focus on learning the major ones and that should be enough. Remember to put quality over quantity. A thorough understanding of a few tools is better than knowing a little bit of many tools.
If you’re starting from scratch and want to learn Devops, the Introduction To DevOps course from Udacity is one of the best options to choose from.
Knowledge of Automation Tools
You must know how to use automation tools as it’s one of the most essential skills required for a DevOps engineer.
Collaboration Skills
No matter how great your technical skills are, or how vast your knowledge is, you aren’t going to cut it as a DevOps engineer without proper communication and collaboration skills.
The entire role of a DevOps engineer is to help connect the various teams so that they can effectively work together. For that, you will have to talk to people and convince them to align their goals with each other.
Security Skills
Security Skills are also pretty important for a DevOps engineer to ensure the system is secure enough, and no vulnerabilities arise during the process.
You should work on solidifying your security skills as negligence in the matter can hurt your chances of succeeding as a DevOps engineer.
Passion
I feel like a key ingredient that every DevOps engineer should have is passion. The job isn’t easy and an engineer without passion will provide low productivity.
A DevOps engineer has to learn new tools all the time to keep up with the ever-changing industry. Passion is one thing that can help you to stay on track and keep going.
Along with the above skillsets, it would be a great addition to learn soft skills and negotiation skills. The soft skills will help you learn how to communicate effectively at the right moment. And the negotiation skills will be a safe harbor when you are facing conflict or during salary negotiations during an interview.
Best Courses to Become DevOps Engineer 2021
While there are several sources to learn DevOps for free, you won’t get the certifications to showcase your skill set to your employer. This is one of the core reasons why you should choose the DevOps course with certification. Below are some of the best resources to learn DevOps all by yourself from the comfort of your home.
Intro to DevOps by Nutanix by Udacity is best to get started from scratch.
DevOps Engineer Masters Program by Edureka is a complete master course program that will teach all the essential DevOps tools along with the required scripting languages.
Become a Cloud Dev Ops Engineer by Udacity is a more intermediate course that takes the cloud computing approach.
Continuous Delivery & DevOps from Coursera is a great course to learn CI/CD skillset and other essential skills. Learning the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery is like a backbone of DevOps.
Benefits of Learning DevOps
There are several benefits of learning DevOps that you will enjoy. Here is a list that includes some of them:
- After learning DevOps, you will find that your skills have improved and your knowledge has increased. DevOps helps you to learn new ways of thinking.
- A DevOps certification will help you get better jobs. DevOps engineers are high in demand and if you have the skills, you are sure to find a great opportunity somewhere.
- DevOps processes help make things more efficient and productive. You are sure to find your productivity raising after getting your DevOps certification.
- You will also be able to produce higher quality products with a DevOps certification, which will further add to the value of your organization.
- You will be earning a higher salary with a DevOps certification as it raises your value as a professional.
Tools Used by DevOps Engineers
As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of DevOps tools, but you don’t have to learn all of them. Here are some of the best ones that you should know about:
Jenkins: Jenkins is an automation tool that will help you automate certain parts of the software development process. It’s free and open-source.
GitHub: A great collaboration tool for developers, GitHub makes sharing codes quite easy and fast. The editing features are also quite helpful thanks to the rollback options.
Ansible: Another popular software development automation tool is Ansible. It is quite simple in nature so you can count on it for easy management.
Docker: Docker is a tool that helps you with the packaging of software into a single unit called a container, which also carries all the dependencies needed. To learn Docker, check our recommended courses. Also, practicing on general Docker projects will enhance your skills.
Nagios: Nagios is a popular monitoring tool that helps you watch over the networks in your organization so that you can identify and eliminate any issues that arise.
Slack: One of the best collaboration tools out there is Slack. It provides a common communication platform to teams where they can collaborate on problems.
Summary
In this article, I have told you about all the skills required for a DevOps engineer as well as the tools you will have to use and answered your question – what are the skills required for DevOps engineer? You have also seen the benefits of learning DevOps.
What’s next? My advice would be to work on improving the skills I have mentioned. Just stay determined and get a proper DevOps certification. With a bit of passion, you will be sure to go a long way in your career.
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