IT recruitments have never been easy, specifically for the niche or senior positions. DevOps engineer is definitely one of them. However, even the biggest challenges can be solved with a dose of good practices and a careful selection process. So, who are DevOps engineers, and what task do they perform on a daily basis? How to hire a DevOps engineer? Follow the article to learn more.
Who is a DevOps engineer?
Although a few years ago the position didn’t even exist, DevOps engineer has become one of the most recruited positions on the LinkedIn platform back in 2018.
Who is a DevOps engineer? DevOps, meaning Development & Operations, is a methodology for improving IT projects. DevOps engineers possess both coding and engineering skills and facilitate collaboration between a number of technical departments across the organization. They are responsible for introducing procedures and tools, managing the entire software development cycle in order to increase the company’s productivity and accelerate the software development process.
DevOps engineer:
- manages all software development life cycles
- leads IT projects
- designs or improves IT infrastructure
- collaborates with developers and system operators admins and staff
- optimizes release cycles
- introduces automation
- builds tools to reduce errors and integrate systems
- investigates and resolves technical issues
- performs testing and benchmarking
- monitors and evaluates progress.
What’s crucial, a DevOps engineer is not a programmer. DevOps is a holistic approach to the software development process and IT operations based on a specific culture, philosophy and implementing good practices. This is why DevOps engineers must present a wide field of competencies in both hard skills and soft skills. Although DevOps engineers rarely code themselves, they should have a good understanding of programming languages and software architecture in order to be able to support and accelerate the work of other IT team members.
Thanks to DevOps engineers, the IT department can reduce project complexity, prevent drawbacks and bottlenecks and benefit from automation, unified processes, and easier software maintenance.
“If you want to stand out as a candidate for the position of DevOps Engineer then the experience with working in the cloud computing can be a big advantage. DevOps specialists with commercial experience with the public cloud and Kubernetes can count on the highest salaries.”
Agnieszka Ryba – IT Recruiter
How to hire a DevOps programmer?
So, how to find a highly qualified DevOps engineer capable of supporting you in achieving your business goals?
First of all, DevOps is not a unified term and may mean something slightly different for different people. This is why you need to define what kind of skills and competencies you are actually searching for in your organization.
Moreover, the career of a DevOps engineer is never a single track. They usually evolve to the position from different backgrounds, which may result in difficulties in selecting the right candidates.
However, regardless of your needs, the person must always possess skills enabling them to overcome specific barriers between various IT fields and to create one unified and collaborative work environment. This means that DevOps engineer should perform:
- great communication skills
- a comprehensive background in operation system administration
- advanced understanding of coding with major programming languages, such as Python, PHP or Java
- understanding of software development methods and cycles
- experience with automation and configuration management tools
- knowledge of open source technologies, cloud services, servers, IT hardware, network devices, virtualization technologies, databases and microservices
- project and team management skills
- experience with CI/CD tools and maintaining CI/CD pipelines
- analytical thinking and skills to use monitoring tools
- ability to resolve technical issues
- skills in software testing
- the capability of supporting UX and handling client-facing communication.
DevOps engineer – salary
How much do DevOps engineers earn? According to Glassdoor, the annual salary of a DevOps engineer exceeds $120 000. Obviously, it depends on the location, scope of actual job functions and individual competencies. For instance, senior DevOps engineers can reach even $140 000 annually. The minimum average salary in the USA is $45 000 and the maximum is $325 000.
However, based on data from PayScale, DevOps salary in Poland reaches 120 000 PLN, which is approx $30 000. According to data presented in our report, the monthly salary ranges from 7 017 PLN ($1 645) up to 29 297 PLN ($6 866), so annually 84 204 PLN ($19 740) – 351 564 PLN ($82 392).
This is a great opportunity to hire excellent experienced specialists within an attractive budget.
Summary
In the IT industry, the recruitment process is never a piece of cake, especially when it comes to a senior position – which DevOps engineer obviously is. Both selection and skills verification must be very careful and detailed so your collaboration with a DevOps engineer can deliver an expected value.
If you wish to hire a DevOps engineer that will truly support you in achieving your goals and objectives, don’t hesitate to contact us. As an experienced IT recruitment company, we use a variety of efficient methods to verify the candidate’s skills and mindset. This is how we provide you with top specialists and support you in finding an expert best matching your technical and business needs.