Roles and Responsibilities of a DevOps Professional

DevOps is the talk of the town, there has been a lot of curiosity, discussions, brainstorming going in the software industry about it. There is also a lot of literature available online about DevOps, but still many fail to understand what exactly it is. Is it technology? Is it a process?

DevOps is a set of practices that combines both sides of the software world, Development (Dev) and IT operations(Ops). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.

Who is a DevOps Engineer?

The DevOps process is still evolving and making progress every day. As the process is still advancing and making a breakthrough, so is the role of DevOps Engineer. It is often difficult to comprehend the role as it is not confined to a single defined entity. But, to put it into the simplest terms the DevOps Engineer is a cross-functional role, the person works with the developers and Operations team to facilitate the code release in alignment with the CI/CD pipeline.

We frequently encounter this common query as “What does a DevOps engineer do?”, “What is the role of a Devops enigneer”,” What responsibilties does Devops team handle” etc.

So to answer that there is no fixed set of defined roles and resposibilities for a Devops professional, but their roles keep on changing from one organisation to another based on the requirement. However as a part of this post we have tried to cover some of the general expectations from Devops person, which again change on a need basis.

Roles and Responsibilities in the team

The DevOps process is an amalgamation of people of different roles coming together to work on a project as a team. So, the role requires a person who has knowledge of diverse fields. Lets have a look at the responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer:

1.  A Software specialist
Oversee the latest technology trends and processes currently in the market. Also, analyze,reserach and implement the new requirements and develops a plan for improvement according to the market trends and customer needs. Someone who had good understanding and experience with the different SDLC phases.

2. Cloud Architect
A Devops engineer also needs to work in a cloud environment, hence experience with public clouds like AWS, Azure,GCP  is required.A lso with more and more organizations following the Hybrid cloud and Multi-cloud approaches, the Devops person is supposed to have worked with different public cloud and should be able to architect Multi-cloud solutions.

3. Team Management
Involved in analyzing the issues, prioritizing and delegating the tasks to the team members. The DevOps Engineer should have thorough knowledge and experience of all stages of the product lifecycle. He should be a good team player and also a good leader so that can lead and manage the team in future.

4. Agile expertise
The DevOps role requires a thorough understanding of the software development lifecycle especially Agile Methodology. The DevOps is an extension of agile, so the inside out knowledge of that helps in implementing the DevOps lifecycle efficiently.

5.Technology Enthusiast (Tech Evangelist)
The DevOps is still growing and evolving every day with new technologies and tools.So the team requires a person who can keep a tab on changing trends in the market. Also he should have a keen interest in technology and able to adapt to technology, as and when needed.

6. Automation Expert
Automate the process end-to-end is also one the of DevOps practices. The role requires the DevOps Engineer to learn the required tools which are commonly used in the DevOps practice. Some of the popular tools are Jenkins, Git, Selenium, Docker, Ansible,Terraform.

7. A Handy Programmer
Ability to write and develop applications using coding languages. The DevOps Engineer should possess strong logical skills as the team might need assistance from development to quick fixes in the code. It is good and advisable for a Devops engineer to have familiarity with at least one of the programming languages like Python, Golang,Java etc.

8. Testing/QA skills
The DevOps Engineer role requires the person to have a good understanding of quality assurance. The role might require to occasionally performing some QA activities involving the framework. Understanding of the QA tools is a big plus as it helps to mitigate the problems faced by the QA team.

9. Deployment strategist
The DevOps Engineer should possess a strong knowledge of continuous integration practice. In simpler terms, the aspiring DevOps Engineer should have excellent knowledge of the deployment process. Some of the tasks involved in the deployment process are server configuration, maintenance, fixing integration issues.

10. Support and Maintenance
The DevOps Engineer is not limited to production deployment. To monitor the issues on the live server requires maximum attention. And to make sure that the application is glitch-free, the DevOps Engineer requires excellent troubleshooting skills.

11. Customer Centric approach
The DevOps Engineer at times are also involved in directly interacting with the end-customers and getting requirements from them.Hence a good Devops candidate should have the ability to handle and deal with global customers and get more business and revenue for the company when needed.

12.Security knowledge
Last but definitely not the least it is to ensure that the application and infrastructure is protected from any malicious attack from outside. And for that DevOps security comes into the picture also known as DevSecOps. Several parameters need to be taken into account to build a robust software application. The DevOps Engineer needs to have a stronghold on software infrastructure, cloud security, and other DevSecOps best practices.

Conclusion The DevOps role demands the aspiring Devops to be a `Master of All`. The DevOps is a promising field but requires an in-depth understanding of the software lifecycle, related tools, and the best practices in the market. The field is evolving and can be a great career option.