While DevOps may sound like a covert military outfit, at its core it is the combination of software development and IT operations. Grab the “dev” from development and the “ops” from IT operations and boom, DevOps. 

Broadly speaking, DevOps operates on a model of continuous integration and continuous delivery, or CI/CD, to deliver and evolve products faster than using traditional management processes. And it’s not just a process. It’s a shift in workplace culture that encourages tight collaboration between teams. There are all kinds of tools and services out there to automate and streamline the DevOps workflow, but ultimately, people are the key component.

AWS offers the following definition of the DevOps model:

DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.

Although very similar, Site Reliability Engineering (or SRE for short) has a few crucial differentiating features from DevOps.

SRE is essentially less human-centric than DevOps, and more concerned with the availability and scalability of the software DevOps teams build. DevOps is very structural, coordinating how team members from both development and operations teams interact with one another to achieve a smooth workflow for building, testing, deploying, and supporting software. SRE focuses on the ongoing functionality of those DevOps principles. Think of DevOps as the “rules” of the culture as a whole, and SRE as the actual following and enforcement of those rules.

Site reliability engineers might spend more time coding because of this, working on the practical, everyday maintenance of software, and DevOps engineers are the powerhouse upfront, designing and deploying the infrastructure.

DevOps and SysOps are two different ways of delivering application software. DevOps is a continuous workflow that relies on short lifecycles and lots of automation, and SysOps infrastructure management is slightly more linear, rigid in its timeline, and virtually risk-free, historically holding a tried-and-true reputation.

When it comes to picking a delivery model, those who prefer DevOps usually have a higher volume of output and less time to work, while those who can afford to take the time to follow a more traditional approach and streamline their existing structure might choose to follow a SysOps model.

No, we aren’t just making up nicknames at this point! DevSecOps is very real, and stands for “Development Security Operations.” Though the two might be used interchangeably, DevSecOps adds a crucial role of addressing potential security issues early in the development process. DevSecOps considers data security and privacy through the evaluation of vulnerable areas and loopholes, adding an additional layer of safety and foolproofing to the DevOps workflow.

DevSecOps enhances the resilience of the DevOps model by taking advantage of the silo-less framework and increasing the availability of security teams so they can operate on a continuous basis instead of simply as-needed.

Because DevOps engineers are asked to tackle the responsibilities associated with both software development and operations (we know — you didn’t see that coming), there are many different job roles they might have. On a daily basis, the tasks associated with the DevOps engineer title are all within the very general category of “problem solving.”

Career DevOps engineers might begin with the title of Release Manager or Test Engineer then increase their rank all the way up to Cloud Engineer or even DevOps Architect. There are many cloud and DevOps certifications available for engineers to work toward, such as Docker, CKA and CKAD, and Jenkins.

The DevOps career path is extremely stable because it is designed to grow as technology improves and the world shifts to the cloud. According to Payscale, DevOps jobs are lucrative and high-paying, with a median salary currently hovering right around the six-figure mark in the U.S.

You don’t need any prerequisites to learn DevOps, but we’d recommend that you have some familiarity with core cloud concepts before getting started. Otherwise that learning curve might be a steep one! Some familiarity with coding and software development is also recommended. 

Now, while you don’t need any prerequisites to learn DevOps, you’ll find that you’re going to need a combination of hard and soft skills to succeed in a DevOps career. 

DevOps professionals must toe the line between tech wizards and people pleasers. Some capabilities DevOps engineers might be required to have include:

• General IT knowledge, such as coding 
• The ability to test and implement software for CI/CD
• Configuration management experience to automate processes with configuration management tools such as CHEF, JUJU, and Puppet
• Research abilities to discover new technologies
• Interpersonal skills to aid in cross-team collaboration and break down silos
• Time management to traverse a continuous workflow

In a nutshell, a DevOps engineer is expected to be a jack of all trades but is well rewarded for navigating the complex system.