DevOps Pros Wanted — Dead or Alive

What is DevOps, and why it is one of the most wanted IT roles

In recent years “DevOps” has become sort of a buzzword across all types of industries within the IT umbrella. It is worth noting that DevOps ideally consists of a blend of philosophies, practices, and tools rather than strictly deploying and maintaining CI/CD pipelines for example. DevOps can be thought of as the glue that holds your product together through the entire Software Development Life Cycle that includes planning, creating, testing, and deploying.

Because it consists of such a wide range of application critical functions, it should be no surprise that DevOps professionals have become sought after in recent years. I’ll admit the title of this article may be a little misleading, as a dead DevOps engineer probably won’t provide your organization much value (unless of course they were able to implement a ton of automated systems before they shuffled off this mortal coil…).

So, lets talk a little more about what a DevOps professional actually does, and how to become one if it sounds like a role that would be a good fit for you.

It is helpful to first think of DevOps as abiding by 3 guiding principles:

1. Empower the exchange of information shared thought processes
2. Shorten and amplify feedback loops
3. Create a culture that fosters continuous experimentation and learning

More specifically, a DevOps engineer looks to improve multiple areas of the aforementioned SDLC using a mix of practices, tools, and technologies. A DevOps engineer attempts to reduce the communication gap between developers, system admins, and programmers all working on the same product but maybe not sharing the same information.

It is also important to remember that a DevOps engineer is able to take a 10,000 foot view of both the product and the company, so that they can see in the grand scheme of things how any issue could potentially affect the entire company.

Finally, a DevOps engineer should be able to write smaller pieces of code in various languages to quickly make and test changes. An example of this could be adding permissions or processes to an existing…