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Universal soldier or narrow specialist? What DevOps engineer should know and be able to


Technologies and tools that DevOps-engineer needs to master.

DevOps is an uptrend in IT, the popularity and demand for a specialty is gradually growing. GeekBrains recently opened the DevOps faculty , which trains specialists in this field. By the way, the profession of devops is often confused with related ones - programming, system administration, etc.

In order to clarify what DevOps is in general and what representatives of this profession are for, we talked with Nikolai Butenko, the architect of Mail.ru Cloud Solutions . He participated in the development of the DevOps faculty course program and at the same time teaches third-quarter students.

What should good DevOps know and be able to do?


Here it is better to say right away what he should not be able to. There is a myth that the representative of this profession is an orchestra man who can write an excellent code, then test it, and in his spare time he goes and repairs his printers to his colleagues. Perhaps it still helps in the warehouse and replaces the barista.

In order to know what a DevOps specialist should be able to do, let's return to the definition of the concept itself. DevOps is the optimization of time from product development to the launch of a product on the market. Accordingly, the specialist optimizes the process between development and operation, speaks their language and builds a competent pipeline.

What you need to know and be able to? Here is what is important:

  • Good soft skills are needed, because you need to simultaneously interact with several departments within the same company.
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DevOps ?


Recently, several branches have emerged within the same specialty. But in general, the concept of DevOps includes mainly three areas: SRE (administrator), Developer (developer), Manager (responsible for interacting with the business). DevOps-specialist understands the needs of the business and organizes effective work between all by creating a unified process.

He is also well aware of all the processes of the product development cycle, architecture, understands information security at that level in order to assess risks. In addition, DevOps knows and understands automation approaches and tools, as well as pre and post-release support for programs and services. In general, the task of DevOps is to just see the whole system as a whole, to direct and manage the processes that contribute to the development of this system.


Unfortunately, in Russia and abroad, employers do not always understand the essence of DevOps. Looking through the published vacancies, you will notice that when calling the DevOps vacancy, companies are looking for system administrators, Kubernetes administrators, or testers in general. Particularly striking is the very heterogeneous stuffing of knowledge and skills in jobs at DevOps with HH.ru, LinkedIn.

It is important to note that DevOps is not just a specialty, it is, first of all, a methodology for treating infrastructure as a code. As a result of the introduction of the methodology, all participants in the development team see and understand not only their area of ​​work, they have a vision of the work of the whole system.

How can DevOps help the company where it works?


One of the most important metrics for business is Time-to-Market (TTM). This is the time to market, that is, the length of time during which the transition from the idea of ​​creating a product to bringing a product to sale is carried out. TTM is especially important in industries where products quickly become obsolete.

With DevOps, a number of well-known retailers in Russia and abroad began to develop new areas. These companies massively go online, completely or partially abandoning offline sites. In these conditions, rapid development of applications and services is needed, which is impossible without the use of DevOps tools.


As a result, some retailers managed to speed up the process of withdrawing the necessary applications and services in just a day. And this is the most important factor in competition in today's market.

Who can become DevOps?


Of course, it will be easier here for representatives of technical specialties: programmers, testers, system administrators. Anyone who is going to this area without an appropriate education needs to be prepared to learn the basics of programming, testing, process management and system administration. And only then, when all this is mastered, it will be possible to begin to study the DevOps-concept as a whole.

In order to better understand the concept and get an idea of ​​the necessary knowledge and skill, it is worth reading the DevOps Guide, studying the Phoenix Project, as well as the DevOps Philosophy methodology. The Art of IT Management . ” Another great book is DevSecOps The Road to Faster, Better and Stronger Software .

Best of all, DevOps is given to those people who have an analytical mindset and are able to use a systematic approach. It's hard to say how long it will take a beginner to become a cool DevOps. It all depends on the initial base, as well as on the environment and tasks that need to be addressed, plus the scale of the company. Among the companies that need devops there are many technological giants: Amazon, Netflix, Adobe, Etsy, Facebook and Walmart.

As a conclusion, we can say that more than half of the DevOps search vacancies are actually intended for experienced system administrators. Nevertheless, the need for DevOps is gradually growing, and now there are very few competent specialists in this field.

In order to become such a specialist, you need to study new technologies, tools, use a systematic approach in the course of work and correctly apply automation. Without it, it is very difficult, if at all possible, to properly organize DevOps.

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