DevOps engineer is a popular profession and has many praises. Whether you are looking for your first job after graduation, or you want to use your previous industry experience and seek opportunities to re-learn, this guide can help you take the right steps to become a DevOps engineer.
Immerse yourself
First, understand the basics, practices, and methods of
DevOps. Before you start using tools, understand the "reason" behind DevOps. The main goal of DevOps engineers is to increase speed and maintain or improve quality throughout the entire software development life cycle (SDLC) to provide maximum business value. You can read articles, watch YouTube videos, and head to your local Meetup group or meeting-to become a member of the popular DevOps community. There you will learn from the experience of success or failure for those community members.
Consider your background
If you have experience in technical work, such as software developers, system engineers, system administrators,
network operations engineers, or database administrators, then you already have a broad vision and useful experience that can help you become a DevOps engineer in the future . If you just started your career after completing a degree in computer science or any other STEM field, you will need some basic springboards during this transition period.
The DevOps engineer role covers a wide range of responsibilities. Here are the three ways companies are most likely to use them:
DevOps engineer who prefers to develop and is responsible for building applications. They use continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), shared repositories, cloud and containers as part of their daily work, but they are not necessarily responsible for building or implementing tools. They understand the infrastructure, and in a mature environment, they can push their code to the production environment.
DevOps engineers who prefer operation and maintenance can compare with system engineers or system administrators. They understand software development, but they do not use their daily main energy to build applications. On the contrary, they are more likely to support the software development team to automate the original manual processes and increase the efficiency of personnel and technical systems. This may mean breaking down legacy code and using less cumbersome automated scripts to run the same commands, or it may mean installing, configuring, or maintaining infrastructure and tools. They ensure that the right tools are installed and used for any team that needs them. They also help the team by teaching them how to use
CI/CD and other DevOps practices.
**Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)** is like a software engineer who solves operational and infrastructure problems. SRE is focused on creating scalable, highly available and highly reliable software systems.
In an ideal world, DevOps engineers will understand all these areas; this is common in mature technology companies. However, DevOps positions at top banks and many Fortune 500 companies are usually biased towards development or operations.
Technology to learn
DevOps engineers need to understand various technologies to get the job done effectively. Regardless of your background, as a
DevOps engineer, start with the basic technologies used and understood.
operating system
The operating system is the soil on which all systems operate, and having basic knowledge is very important. The Linux system is the operating system you are most likely to use every day, although some organizations use Windows. To get started, you can install Linux at home, where you can break the rules as you like and keep learning.
script
Next, choose a language to learn the script. There are many choices, including Python, Go, Java, Bash, PowerShell, Ruby and C/C++. I recommend starting with Python; because it is relatively easy to learn and explain, and it is one of the most popular languages. Python is usually written to follow the basics of object-oriented programming (OOP) and can be used for web development, software development, creating desktop GUIs, and business applications.
cloud
After Linux and Python, I think the next thing to study is cloud computing. Infrastructure is no longer reserved for "operations and maintenance personnel", so you need to contact cloud platforms such as Alibaba Cloud. I started with Alibaba Cloud, because it has a large number of free learning tools, and as a developer AWS can help you avoid detours in operations or even for business components. In fact, you may be overwhelmed by huge tools. Consider starting with EC2, S3 and VPC to see where you want to go from there.
Programming language
If you are passionate about software development and participate in DevOps, continue to improve your programming skills. There are some excellent and widely used languages in DevOps that are the same as scripting languages: Python, Go, Java, Bash, PowerShell, Ruby, and C/C++. You should also be familiar with Jenkins and Git/GitHub, and use them frequently during the CI/CD process.
Container technology
Finally, start learning to use Docker and orchestration platforms (such as Kubernetes) and other tools for containerization. These tools have a large number of free online learning resources, and most cities have local Meetup groups where you can learn from experienced people in a friendly environment (pizza and beer!).
What else
If you have less development experience, you can still use your passion for automation, increase efficiency, collaborate with others, and improve your work to participate in DevOps. I still recommend learning the above tools, but less emphasis on coding/scripting languages. It would be very useful to know SaaS, PaaS, cloud platform and Linux instead. You may be setting up tools and learning how to build resilient and fault-tolerant systems and use them when writing code.
Looking for DEVOPS jobs
The job search process will vary, depending on whether you have been working in technology and are entering DevOps, or you are a graduate who has just started a career.
If you are already engaged in technical work
If you are trying to change from a technical field to a DevOps role, then you must first explore the opportunities of the current company. Can you work with other teams? Try to influence other team members, seek advice, and acquire new skills without leaving your current job. If this is not possible, you may need to move to another company. If you can learn some of the practices, tools and techniques listed above, then you will demonstrate relevant knowledge during the interview. The key is to be honest and not let yourself fail. Most hiring managers know that you don’t know all the answers; if you can show what you have learned and explain that you are willing to learn more, you should have a chance to get a
DevOps job.
If you are starting your career
Open opportunities for companies that hire junior
DevOps engineers. Unfortunately, many companies indicate that they are looking for experienced engineers and recommend that you reapply after gaining some experience. "We want experienced engineers" is frustrating, but very typical, no one seems to be willing to give you your first chance.
However, not everything is frustrating; there are still companies that focus on training and upgrading graduates directly from universities. For example, MThree, where I work, hired fresh graduates and trained them for eight weeks. When they complete the training, participants can fully understand the entire SDLC and understand its application in the Fortune 500 environment. Graduates are hired as junior DevOps engineers at MThree Client Company-MThree paid full-time wages and benefits within the first 18 to 24 months, after which they joined the client as direct employees. This is a good way to bridge the gap from university to vocational technology.
To Sum Up
There are many ways to transition to DevOps engineers. This is a very useful career path that will allow you to stay involved and challenge - and improve your ability to make money.
