Who Is a DevOps Engineer?
What does a DevOps engineer do?
A DevOps engineer uses trusted IT operations to increase code reliability. These engineers handle everything from building and deploying software to ongoing maintenance and updates of critical software and infrastructure.
The primary goal of a DevOps engineer is to reduce software delivery time to end users and implement changes based on feedback. DevOps engineers have the skills necessary to deploy software quickly and efficiently.
But what does a DevOps engineer do in their organization? DevOps specialists know how to work with cloud components to ensure smooth daily operations for the organization. They make sure that everything—from user-level applications to network infrastructure—is kept up to date by leveraging the latest advances in automated testing, scanning, and software deployment, updates, and proper application of the latest changes.
What is the role of a DevOps engineer in product development?
It may be easier to think of a DevOps engineer not as a single profession, but as a cluster of several roles related to product development. DevOps engineers can perform various roles, including:
- Build engineers: compile code, pull in dependencies, and resolve conflicts
- Release engineers: move code from development to production and monitor branches to determine which should go to testing first
- Automation engineers: oversee automated builds before sending them to unit testing, staging, and production.
- Release managers: monitor code updates and schedule deliveries to ensure a timely release cycle.
- Quality assurance engineers: manage and test new code using specialized verification processes.
In smaller organizations, a single DevOps engineer may perform many of the above duties, but in larger or more established organizations, these roles may become more specialized.
DevOps Engineer Job Description
Those who want to become DevOps engineers should study the job requirements before applying. Different companies have their own specialized DevOps roles, so a generalized DevOps engineer job description is difficult to define.
DevOps engineers can work in automation, infrastructure, tooling, quality, or monitoring. It is important for DevOps engineers to have a good understanding of the wide range of responsibilities expected of them. They may need to perform code deployments, infrastructure configuration, or automated quality checks.
DevOps engineers may also monitor networks and send alerts to ensure continuous improvement of the entire software ecosystem of the organization.
DevOps Engineer Responsibilities List
DevOps engineers have ongoing responsibilities that ensure business continuity without disruption. The responsibilities listed below depend on their level of experience and previous qualifications and may vary across organizations:
- Junior level: must manage automation capabilities, perform quality audits, and collaborate with colleagues from various teams to deploy releases on time.
- Mid-level: have the knowledge to monitor and improve system performance, perform installations, and provide support to users at the system level; also capable of troubleshooting software issues, creating automation scripts, and understanding how certain code changes can affect others.
- Senior level: experienced professionals with the skills and knowledge to lead teams and projects.
DevOps engineers must work with systems throughout their lifecycle, improving their functionality and integrating ongoing changes without failures or interruptions.
Where Does a DevOps Engineer Work?
If you decide to become a DevOps engineer, you may be interested in which industries you can work in. Most often they are found in the technology industry and in financial technology (FinTech), but they can also work in the technical departments of companies that have their own internal IT teams.