The skills of a DevOps

The DevOps engineer has a transversal role that requires a good mastery of the IT development stages, as well as a good understanding of the challenges of continuous deployment and production. The DevOps job requires the mastery of various skills. First of all, it is necessary to master the technical skills that the job requires. The DevOps consultant must therefore

• know how to develop scripts and do integration
• use construction and virtualisation tools: Docker, Kubernetes, etc
• know how to set up continuous integration chains (CI/CD)
• know the operating system environment: Linux, Windows systems
• mastering automated testing or deployment monitoring tools
• be meticulous about data security and have excellent knowledge of server systems
• work on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) and others as well as on On-Premises platforms

In addition to technical skills, the DevOps engineer must be able to evaluate the functioning of applications, make technical adjustments and measure the performance of the solutions developed.

While technical mastery is crucial, the human qualities of the DevOps consultant or engineer represent a major asset in their relations with other teams and the hierarchy. In addition to management skills, they must be able to listen to the demands of the client and the teams. It is therefore essential that he/she has good interpersonal skills to better understand the needs and to exchange information more easily:

• he must be able to manage and direct the teams with which he collaborates
• he must always have a certain distance from the project in order to carry it out successfully and respect the objectives set
• he must be able to formulate requests in technical language
• He must be able to federate all the participants in order to develop a personalised and coherent solution

Not every DevOps engineer masters all programming languages, especially novices. A good engineer must therefore have the ability to quickly learn deployment tools or technologies so that the company can succeed in its digital transformation.

Moreover, the company that has to recruit a DevOps engineer or call on a DevOps consultant will focus in particular on DevOps practices. In other words, it will pay particular attention to the work processes of the person in question. The latter will need to be familiar with various cloud computing solution providers. Finally, a good DevOps engineer must regularly monitor technological developments to remain at the forefront of his field. He must be on the lookout for new languages and new digital tools.