Four Competencies Needed to Become a DevOps Engineer

A skilled DevOps engineer manages an organization’s application development and delivery process, ensuring that software revisions are controlled and streamlined.

You need the following skills to understand the development and operations processes and work comfortably in both environments.

Principles of Linux and Scripting

Fundamentals of Linux will allow you to handle files, process texts, system administration, and process management. These skills will enable you to handle system administration and engineering. Additionally, you need to train yourself on Linux server operations and proactive monitor setup for the software, with a keen knowledge of load balancers like Apache and Nginx with network concepts like IP gateways and TCP/IP. It is crucial for you to master the system administration and operations before upskilling with DevOps engineering. Simultaneously, scripting skills are essential for DevOps engineering skills.

It is recommended to be proficient in at least one of the scripting languages, which will allow you to automate builds and testing frameworks and applications, enhancing the DevOps Engineer’s productivity.

Also, if you are naïve to programming, it is crucial to begin upskilling with Ops rather than DevOps.

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Basic Automation, Cloud, and Testing Skills

One of the fundamentals of DevOps engineering is automation. You should be able to automate the complete DevOps pipeline, like CI/CD cycles, application performance monitoring, and configurations. This automation skillset is associated with the ability to adhere to DevOps scripting, coding, and toolset knowledge. Additionally, cloud and DevOps are dependent on and influenced by each other. DevOps initiates and drives the process, while the cloud provides the process with a crucial platform to perform tests, deploy and release codes. You need basic automation testing abilities after automation as DevOps automation pipelines require tests that run rapidly without failing.

Understanding of Toolset and Security Skills

For you to be a successful skilled DevOps engineer, having adequate knowledge about the DevOps toolset is a plus. This will allow you to grasp the numerous phases of implementation. You need to understand how to utilize the tools like version control, deployment automation, monitoring, analytics, configuration management, and continuous integration servers. The risk rates are increasing with the speed of deployment that DevOps facilitates. Due to the traditional and constraint security factors at the end or as a separate process might not process. However, DevSecOps comes with an advantage that integrates security with SDLC right from the start. Hence, understanding the DevOps skill set will assist you in having a successful DevOps career.

Also Read: Best Practices to Build B2B Custom Software

Containerization, Continuous Integration, and Version Management Skills

You need to be familiar with container-related tools as it allows to gather a program’s code and all the components and run them into a single package. Containerized applications require minimal resources and are easy to deploy in new environments.

Basic examples include Docker Engine, Docker Swarm, systemd-nspawn and Kubernetes, LXC, and container registries. Continuous integration (CI) is a DevOps method that allows you to merge software changes to the main branch multiple times. You must own the skill of automating the integration of code changes from numerous developers into a unified software project.

DevOps engineers need to manage and track the changes to the software code. This can be achieved with version management. You need to understand the working of tools like Jenkins, Maven, and Git, which are an addition to vital version management skills.

Furthermore, it would be best if you had insights into DevOps tools like GitHub and software development practices such as continuous delivery. A DevOps engineer needs to be familiar with agile methodology, framework, Infrastructure as Code (IAC), and provisioning in addition to knowledge of operating system workflow and project management.

DevOps embraces automation while reducing errors and enhancing speed. It allows you to work in tandem instead of in siloes driving the growth and success of DevOps. In addition to the above skill set, you need to have an adequate understanding of coding and testing with good communication skills to be a sound DevOps engineer.