What Does a DevOps Engineer Do? A 2024 Career Guide

A DevOps engineer leads and coordinates different teams’ efforts to create and maintain a company's software. The term “DevOps” is a portmanteau of “development operations” and is a practice that aims to automate all software construction steps. 

The DevOps role is in high demand as India’s companies undergo a digital revolution with automation and artificial intelligence (AI). As organisations in India and worldwide seek to strengthen their information technology capabilities, the need for skilled professionals also increases.

Working with cutting-edge tools and systems, a DevOps engineer's goal is to shorten the software development cycle, increase update frequency, and allow for more dependable releases. 

How much is a DevOps engineer's salary?

The average salary for DevOps engineers in India is ₹10,40,352 per year [1]. Remember that this does not include the average of ₹2,40,352 DevOps engineers receive annually as commission, profit sharing, and other non-salary cash compensation. Experience and location can also affect how much you can expect to earn. For example, in large cities like Bangalore, DevOps engineers average wages of ₹10,00,000 annually [2].

Types of DevOps engineers

DevOps engineers may take on specific roles, depending on their interests and the organisations’ needs. Among the types of DevOps engineers are:

• Release manager: Manages ongoing software updates.

• Software developer: Writes code

• Software tester: Tests code for bugs

• Quality assurance engineer: Reviewing and testing new code

• Security engineer: ensures the security of the software in the system

• Automation engineer: Works to automate the software and systems

In India, tech giants like Oracle, Infosys, Accenture, Tech Mahindra, TCS, IBM, and Wipro are among the companies that regularly seek DevOps professionals.

DevOps engineering skills

DevOps engineering requires a mix of technical and people skills to succeed.

Technical skills

DevOps engineers are engineers first and foremost. In addition to traditional engineering skills, like maths and analytical thinking, you should understand:

• Project management: As the person responsible for ensuring that a company's software is up to-date, secure, and bug- and glitch-free, a DevOps engineer looks for and implements any relevant improvements constantly. A good DevOps engineer must have a firm grasp of the initiation, planning, execution, and monitoring of everything, from minor bug fixes to massive updates. 

• Coding: Although some DevOps engineers may not always write code, they must still understand the fundamentals of whatever coding language is used.

• Server administration: DevOps engineers administer a company's networks and servers that host any software being created. This means creating accounts, updating permissions, and ensuring regular backups occur. They also set the procedures junior IT professionals follow when troubleshooting, debugging, or making other changes.

• Service support: As a DevOps engineer, you’ll provide on-call service for the systems and be responsible for performance monitoring, diagnostics, and failover and availability capabilities.

Workplace skills

DevOps engineers are team players and spend many days working with people from different professional backgrounds. To be successful, you must have the following skills:

• Communications: Ensuring that software is constantly up-to-date and glitch-free involves talking to tech support, listening to feedback, and passing it on to the team. They must effectively explain what's happening and what needs to be done. 

• Coaching: A practical DevOps engineer should always look to improve their team and software. This means identifying gaps in the skill set and devising ways to fill them, whether training existing staff or hiring new staff. 

• Flexibility: Software issues can happen at any hour of the day or night. DevOps engineers often work irregular hours and stay on call to resolve problems. 

• Agility: You may or may not have to work in Agile methodology. Either way, you’ll still need to be adaptable, quickly learn new technologies, and pivot to new standards.

How to become a DevOps engineer

You can take many paths to become a DevOps engineer. Here are some ways to get there. 

Consider a bachelor's degree. 

Most DevOps engineer roles require at least a bachelor’s or master's degree in computer science or a related field, though some employers may accept equivalent work experience. Educational institutions can’t teach DevOps well because this work bridges development and operations. Thus, it’s pretty situational.

Earn a certification. 

Some companies might look for certifications in particular subjects. For example, some in-demand certifications include global options like the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional Certification and credentials in Linux administration and SQL server development to show competency. 

Start in a related role.

DevOps engineers should have extensive experience with software tools and coding languages. To obtain this experience, you can work in IT, system administration, or software development.

DevOps engineers can start with an entry-level system administrator, support, or help desk role to gain experience with software maintenance.

Get started in DevOps.

If you're ready to take the next step toward an in-demand career in DevOps, consider earning the Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Cloud DevOps Engineer Professional Certificate on Coursera. Learn from industry experts at Google as you prepare for the Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certification exam.