What’s The Role Of A DevOps Engineer?

If you’re like most business owners, you probably think of software projects in terms of cost and time. You want to know what the project will cost, how long it will take, and what the expected return on investment (ROI) will be.

But there’s another essential factor to consider — the role of a DevOps engineer in a software project. Well, what is that role, and what impact does it have on ROI? Let’s take a closer look.

Understanding DevOps 💭

Most people think of a DevOps engineer as someone who solely handles the development side of things, but that’s not always the case.

In fact, a good DevOps engineer can wear many hats and take on various roles to help a software project be successful. Suffice to say that a DevOps engineer can help you speed up and ease the entire software development process.

But how does a DevOps engineer do that? Before that, let’s start by explaining what a DevOps engineer is.

A DevOps engineer is someone who bridges the gap between development and operations, ensuring that the software project is appropriately developed and efficiently deployed or maintained.

In other words, they make sure that everything goes smoothly from start to finish. So if you’re looking for someone who can help manage your software project from beginning to end, a DevOps engineer is definitely the person you want on your team.

Who Is A DevOps Engineer? 🤔

DevOps engineers are the (although often unsung) rockstars behind your company’s IT infrastructure.

They ensure that all parts of a project go smoothly together with CI/CD practices by deploying software changes seamlessly and reliably to production environments where they can be tested for bugs before being released into public-facing websites or apps.

DevOps engineers use these skills not only when developing your product but also while maintaining it through automated deployments, which means less work on everyone’s part.

A DevOps engineer is the timely connection between technology and business. They understand how each side works, which allows them to create an effective continuous integration/continuous delivery process (CI/CD) that helps prevent system breakdowns and unplanned amendments from security threats by building security into every step of the software development life cycle (SDLC).

What Does It Take To Be A DevOps Engineer? 👨‍💻

DevOps engineers will be responsible for automating the software development process. This includes developing and testing code, deploying and releasing software, and delivering it to users. They will also need to ensure that all operational procedures are efficient and secure. They will also be responsible for end-user satisfaction.

DevOps engineers need to have experience with various software development tools and practices to succeed in this role. They should also be able to work effectively in a team environment.

The following qualifications and experience are the most important to becoming a DevOps engineer. You can use the checklist below when assessing a potential DevOps candidate for your company.

☑️ A DevOps engineer typically needs an undergraduate degree in software engineering, information technology, or a related field. Consider someone with a degree or certification that focuses on development and operations of software, including but not limited to Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) and Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA).

☑️ Apart from the formal education, look for necessary experiences such as the number of on-job training, coding projects, and technical knowledge the candidate has. A DevOps engineer should have a working knowledge of at least one programming language (such as Python, Ruby, Node.js or any other), an understanding of different OS concepts (from process management to networking concepts), and a knowledge of managing servers based upon different flavours (Redhat, Debian, Arch).

☑️ Knowledge of various cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, Digital Ocean), familiarities with container orchestrators like Kubernetes, use of IaC tools such as Terraform or Cloud Formation, in-depth knowledge of CI/CD tools, and scripting skills in Bash will be an added advantage.

☑️ Check if the candidate has any industry-level certifications, such as Linux Administration, Docker Certified Associate, Hashicorp certified Terraform Associate DevOps, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD), Microsoft Certified Azure DevOps Engineer Expert, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, and Google’s Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer. [A word of caution: Remember that while having certifications is a great thing in itself, it shouldn’t be taken as the ultimate yardstick of quality.]

☑️ Besides, someone who’s participating in online developer forums, writing blogs about DevOps, and getting involved in open-source projects will turn out to be an industry thought leader in the future.

☑️ Soft skills are equally important as technical skills as the candidate must possess collaboration and leadership skills. Finally, a DevOps engineer should have an aptitude for life-long learning and for adapting to new technologies.

At WEBO Digital, we ensure that our DevOps engineers possess all the required qualifications — so we can leverage their technical expertise to help your company throughout its software development process.

Role Of DevOps In Software Development 👩‍💻

The traditional software development life cycle used to be more fraught with different challenges. The obstacles slow down the process, increase potential errors, and lead to frustration among team members who are inefficiently handed off between roles or lack communication.

This led the team members away from their work due to wasted time on projects that may never come to fruition because they were put forth without proper planning first-hand, which leads us here today, where these problems continue — but fortunately, we now have DevOps.

With the growing importance of DevOps, more engineers specialise in connecting all aspects of development. These individuals ensure quality outcomes by monitoring operations for any issues before they arise and ensuring that QA has everything needed to complete their testing seamlessly when it comes to making calls on what needs fixing or launching into production.

They work closely with not only developers but also QA teams to create test cases or monitors for performance testing; they also have an eye on production status, security updates, and version control procedures, so everything goes smoothly during update periods — all this to make your project go quicker without sacrificing its quality.

The DevOps team’s role is to analyse your business needs and requirements and optimise all processes from scratch to have a successful software product. They do this by automating projects through CI/CD pipelines in order to avoid human errors and make the systems more reliable, efficient, and stable. They consider what elements should be included in the infrastructure and implement new features quickly as per the changing demands of the marketplace.

This helps agile development because changes can always get managed efficiently without having any issues with version control or lost updates.

Benefits Of Having DevOps Engineers In Your Company 💰

DevOps is a software development approach that aims at improving the efficiency and productivity of businesses.

DevOps offers five key benefits which you should know about.

⏩ Increased Efficiency & Productivity 💨

DevOps is all about efficiency and productivity. When you have integrated development, operations teams that work closely together can improve workflow to get new features or fixes faster than ever before! This means communicating better with your customers, which helps avoid misunderstandings and errors, leading to an even more productive process overall.

⏩ Improved Flexibility 🙋‍♂️

The software development world is changing rapidly, but you can stay ahead by transforming how your company does things with DevOps. The benefits are enormous: scalability for businesses of all sizes; transformation capabilities that will help you take on the challenges in this ever-changing market — and more than anything else, it’s agility that makes DevOps so valuable.

⏩ Reduced Downtime/Faster Recovery Time 🚀

DevOps is more than just a way to make your software development process less painful; it can also help you drastically reduce costly downtime. With automation in place and tools that allow for rapid recovery from failures or accidents — such as building automated systems with testing suites, so they’re always up-to-date without human intervention — any system going down during business hours will be reduced significantly.

⏩ Higher Product Quality — More Revenue! 💸

With DevOps solutions, you can improve the quality of your products while also cutting down on defects. By bringing together developers and operators in one process, they can identify problems earlier, which will lead them towards solving these issues before going into production — this means higher customer experience and better software that’s less likely to have any bugs when it goes live.

⏩ Minimal Cost of Production 💰

When you invest in DevOps, your company can experience a significant drop in costs. With knowledge about infrastructure and optimisation practices for the production environment (and management roles cut down by bringing maintenance updates under one umbrella), it becomes more accessible than ever before to optimise the overall budget.

DevOps engineers have a deep understanding when handling computer systems, so they always follow best practices which leads them to find ways to save time spent during repairs or deployments without sacrificing quality standards.

⏩ Better Security 🔐

One of the significant advantages that DevOps provides is better security. With this approach, you can cover more aspects and layers to identify potential vulnerabilities before they cause damage — and by using automated tools like those available on-premises or through cloud services like Azure Security Center (MSC), there’s less risk for human error when it comes down protecting your company from cyberattacks!

How Can You Start Your DevOps Journey? 🤗

DevOps is an emerging trend that’s gaining momentum in the past few years. It’s unclear exactly how long it will take for every business to get on board with this style of software development. Still, there are some steps you can take now — if your company wants an edge over others when they inevitably jump onto the DevOps train come 2022. 

Here are three essential tips to consider when implementing DevOps philosophy in your tech stack.

❇️ Define Your Company’s Goals & Objectives 🏢

Practices like DevOps can be helpful for organisations of all sizes, from small start-ups to large corporations. Before you begin implementing these practices in your business, you must first understand your goals and how you could potentially benefit from this strategy?

The easiest way to get success by finding your own “sweet spot” when looking at businesses is by breaking your company’s goals and objectives into three categories — and segmenting them with your business objectives. Are you a business that:

1. wants more efficiency and lower costs at the same time,
2. needs increased innovation opportunities or better customer experiences; or
3. wants to reduce time spent on maintenance tasks while still delivering high-quality results?

Understanding these questions will help you plan and start better.

❇️ Evaluate Your Current Technical Ecosystem 🔍

Assessment is the first step to building your plan for success. It’s essential not just in terms of what you do but also how well-targeted that effort will be if it has any chance at getting results!

A lot goes into this process — from understanding systems and processes throughout your organisation to assessing individual team members who need more training or support to work better together as one cohesive unit.

❇️ Implement DevOps [Training Your Team To Monitoring The Process] 🧰

DevOps is a new-age culture that can improve productivity and coordination between developers, QA testers, and IT managers. To implement this successfully, you need a knowledgeable team trained on how it works so they know what resources would best help them in their day-to-day tasks and provide those people with some training first.

Once you have trained your team and set up the necessary processes, start implementing DevOps measures into your organisation. This may include automating tasks or creating a collaborative culture through software tools designed for this type of work to streamline business operations across all departments within an enterprise.

To ensure your DevOps implementation is successful, you should continuously monitor and refine the process. This includes tracking progress and identifying areas where improvement could be made so that everything goes smoothly for both developers trying new techniques while meeting business goals.

To Sum Up ✨

DevOps is a culture and set of practices that emphasise the collaboration and communication between software developers, QA professionals, operations staff, and management.

The goal of DevOps is to automate all stages of software creation so that processes are more flexible and dynamic, maximising the efficiency and security of operational processes while increasing end-user satisfaction.

If you’re looking for help incorporating DevOps into your own organisation or want to learn even more about the role of a DevOps engineer, don’t hesitate to reach out to us today! We have years of experience helping companies with software and technology best practices and can guide you each step of the way.