A few years ago, a new specialty DevOps engineer appeared in IT. It quickly became one of the most popular and in demand on the market. But here's the paradox - part of the popularity of DevOps is due to the fact that companies hiring such specialists often confuse them with representatives of other professions.
This article is dedicated to the analysis of the nuances of the DevOps profession, the current position in the market and prospects. We figured out this complex issue with the help of the dean at the online university GeekUniversity Dmitry Burkovsky.
So what is DevOps?
The term itself stands for Development Operations. This is not so much a specialty as an approach to organizing work in a medium or large company when preparing a product or service. The fact is that different departments of the same company are involved in the preparation process, and their actions are far from always well coordinated.
So, developers, for example, are not always aware of what problems users have when working with a released program or service. Technical support - knows everything perfectly, but she may not be aware of what is "inside" the software. And here a DevOps engineer comes to the rescue, helping to coordinate the development process, contributes to the automation of processes, and improves their transparency.
The DevOps concept unites people, processes and tools.
What should a DevOps engineer know and be able to do?
According to Joe Sanchez, one of the most famous adherents of the DevOps concept, a representative of the profession must understand the nuances of the concept itself, have experience in administering both Windows and Linux systems, understand program code written in different languages, work Chef, Puppet, Ansible. It is clear that to parse the code, you need to know several programming languages, and not just know, but also have development experience. Also, experience in testing ready-made software products and services is highly desirable.
But this is ideally, not every representative of the IT sphere can find such a level of experience and knowledge. Here is a set of minimum knowledge and experience necessary for good DevOps:
- OS GNU/Linux, Windows.
- At least 1 programming language (Python, Go, Ruby).
- The shell scripting language is bash on Linux and powershell on Windows.
- Version control system - Git.
- Configuration management systems (Ansible, Puppet, Chef).
- At least one of the container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Apache Mesos, Amazon EC2 Container Service, Microsoft Azure Container Service).
- Ability to work with cloud providers (for example: AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.) using Terraform, know how an application is deployed to the cloud.
- Ability to configure CI/CD pipeline (Jenkins, GitLab), ELK stack, monitoring systems (Zabbix, Prometheus).
And here is a list of skills that are most often indicated by DevOps specialists on Habr Career.
In addition, a DevOps specialist must understand the needs and requirements of the business, see its role in the development process and be able to build the process taking into account the interests of the customer.
And what about the entry threshold?
The list of knowledge and experience was not in vain given above. Now it becomes easier to understand who can become a DevOps specialist. It turns out that the easiest way to move into this profession is for representatives of other IT specialties, especially for system administrators and developers. Both of them can quickly increase the missing amount of experience and knowledge. They already have half of the required set, and often more than half.
And great DevOps engineers come from testers. They know what works and how, they are aware of the shortcomings and shortcomings of software and hardware. We can say that a tester who knows programming languages and knows how to write programs - without five minutes of DevOps.
But it will be difficult for a representative of a non-technical specialty who has never dealt with either development or system administration. Of course, nothing is impossible, but still, beginners need to adequately assess their strengths. It will take a lot of time to get the required "baggage".
Where can DevOps get a job?
In a large company, whose work is directly or indirectly related to the development of applications and the administration of hardware. The maximum deficit in DevOps engineers is in companies that provide a large number of services to end users. These are banks, telecom operators, the largest Internet providers, etc. Among the companies that are actively hiring DevOps engineers are Google, Facebook, Amazon, Adobe.
Small business start-ups are also implementing DevOps, but for many of these companies, hiring DevOps engineers is more of a fad than a real need. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are not so many. Small companies need, rather, “a Swiss, and a reaper, and a gambler on the pipe,” that is, a person who is able to work in a number of areas. A good service station can handle all of this. The fact is that speed of work is important for small businesses, while optimization of work processes is critical for medium and large businesses.
Here are some vacancies (you can follow the new ones on Habr Career at ):
DevOps salary in Russia and worldwide
In Russia, the average salary of a DevOps engineer is about 132 thousand rubles per month. These are the calculations of the salary calculator of the Habr Career service, made on the basis of 170 questionnaires for the 2nd half of 2020. Yes, the sample is not that big, but as an “average temperature in the hospital” it is quite suitable.
There are salaries in the amount of 250 thousand rubles, there are about 80 thousand and a little lower. It all depends on the company, qualifications and the specialist himself, of course.
As for other countries, the statistics on salaries are also known. Stack Overflow specialists did a good job, analyzing the questionnaires of about 90 thousand people - not only DevOps, but also representatives of technical specialties in general. It turned out that Engineering Manager and just DevOps get the most.
A DevOps engineer earns about $71 a year. According to Ziprecruiter.com, a professional in this field earns from $86 a year. Well, the Payscale.com service shows figures that are completely pleasing to the eye - the average salary of a DevOps specialist, according to the service, exceeds $91. And this is the salary of a junior specialist, while a senior one can receive $135.
As a conclusion, it should be said that the demand for DevOps is gradually growing, the demand for specialists of any level exceeds the supply. So if you have a desire, you can try yourself in this area. True, we must remember that one desire is not enough. You need to constantly develop, learn and work.
Source: habr.com