Sometimes the best career fields are ones we don’t know too much about. A little over three years ago, if you asked me what a software developer did daily, I would probably mumble something about mysterious command line interfaces and social isolation. Thankfully, someone took the time out of their day back in 2021 to say that none of that is true. The profession is highly transparent and very social.

I’ve been working as a full-time software engineer for a little over a year now, and I’m already starting down another new career path! No, I’m not leaving software development behind. I’ve been brought on as a DevOps engineer consultant for a major pharmaceutical company. 

I can still remember the trepidations of becoming a new software developer, and more recently a DevOps engineer. Whether you work in software or you are new to the field, changing career focus can be daunting. Today I want to enlighten you on what DevOps engineers are and encourage you to venture down this career path. I’ll include some context of what the profession is and some helpful things I wish I had known before I started as a DevOps engineer.

WHAT ARE DEVOPS ENGINEERS?

You may be asking, what is a DevOps engineer? Well, that takes some context around where they exist and what kind of environment they exist in. DevOps engineers sit between software developers and operations personnel. Developers are generally the folks who write the code, while operations folks focus on deploying, monitoring, and maintaining applications. DevOps engineers bridge the gap between these two functions by easing workflows, increasing speed of delivery, and ensuring security throughout the process. In the end, DevOps engineers, much like operations and development, are focused on getting quality software into the hands of customers. 8th Light has published some articles that explore specific practices and challenges in DevOps. Amazon Web Services provides a deeper overview as well.

WHAT DOES A DEVOPS ENGINEER DO?

DevOps engineers manage the workflows and delivery cycles for software teams across the organization and all of its digital products. They create shared systems that allow other teams to thrive, and they create custom solutions for their platform’s unique needs.

DevOps Engineers Support Teams

Imagine the following: You are a DevOps engineer supporting a large healthcare corporation. You have seven teams of software engineers delivering applications using different programming languages. You have a bit of .Net in C#, some Java, a bunch of bash scripting, and even some PowerShell! That is a lot of developers and complexity to support.

Your job as a DevOps Engineer is not to understand all of their applications in-depth, but to understand the team’s difficulties and frustrations when working with their apps. Your main concern is ensuring obstacles are removed from their path in the delivery pipeline, processes have quick response times, and only high-quality code is reaching the deployment cycle.

DevOps Engineers Create Custom Solutions

Your engineers already have a lengthy process flow to get code to production. They have to run unit tests, user interface tests, and security analyses on their changes. Then they notify their seniors that their code is ready for review. Once that code is ready for deployment, your teams have to notify their seniors that their code is ready for review. They may have to email the operations team to schedule deployment and generate required government compliance reports.

As a DevOps engineer, you create automation solutions for their workflow. You can write custom programs that automatically test new code before it is uploaded to Github. You can even write custom scripts that run new code through a security analysis. All this is created to improve your supported teams’ quality of life.

One great tool that I’ve been able to master in my first few months on the job has been Github Actions, and my colleague has written an introductory article on the tool.

DevOps Engineers are Problem Solvers

As one of my team leads points out, “anyone can build a website.” Although they might not be sustainable or well-written websites, I completely agree. The amount of documentation out there on every web framework is extensive. Sometimes it feels like everything has a StackOverflow post written about it.

DevOps is different because it’s dependent on the implementation details. DevOps is composed of methods and best practices that have to be applied in a myriad of different situations. You’ll find great articles talking about the best methodologies for ensuring continuous compliance on AWS, but you’ll rarely come across exact instructions for how to integrate a 10-year-old legacy .NET Framework 3.0 application into a security workflow. As a DevOps engineer, you have to be flexible in your approach and be tenacious in figuring out solutions.

Some of the tools and examples of what I use every day are free for public and personal projects. I encourage you to explore open-source projects that pique your interest. If you’re interested in checking out a tool that handles security check automation, try SonarCloud.

CAN YOU BECOME A DEVOPS ENGINEER?

Only you can answer that question, but I have found the work tremendously satisfying. I get to improve the quality of life of engineers. I work on complicated problems and create novel solutions. I am constantly exposed to new technologies, and I always feel like there are new learning paths to go down.

I won’t lie — the DevOps engineer career path is not an easy one and is far from glamorous. This career field is all about support, and if you are doing your job, you won’t be in the limelight. You enable others to reach their full potential, but you’ll rarely get recognition. You sometimes have to stand in the developers’ way, but you do know that the code that customers will receive will be secure. You frequently question process workflows and break down obstacles, but organizational norms are hard to change.

So, if you are ready to impact the lives of software developers and operations personnel, I hope to see you on my DevOps team in the future.

This post originally appeared as What to Know When Becoming a DevOps Engineer, on January 19, 2023. Code Platoon thanks 8th Light for its permission to repost this blog.

Seth Thomas is a Software Crafter at 8th Light. Before joining 8th Light, Seth graduated from Code Platoon’s military Coding Bootcamp, which he attended via the DoD SkillBridge program. Seth lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, and enjoys rock climbing, mountaineering, sailing, and running.