DevOps engineers live at the forefront of any healthy functioning software development team. As the swiss army knives that keeps the engineering team moving, DevOps engineering teams focus on communication and improvement across the Continuous Integration/Continuous Development (CI/CD) pipeline. A lot of DevOps jobs require engineers to wear many hats and learn new skills quickly as the engineering team grows or the industry progresses. With a plethora of day-to-day responsibilities, DevOps jobs require both hard skills and soft skills for success. This blog post will outline primary responsibilities of a DevOps engineer and highlight key points technical recruiters should look out for when hiring them.
Communication in DevOps Jobs
DevOps engineers need more than just technical skills to contribute effectively to their team. In the DevOps world, communication goes beyond listening. In many instances, DevOps engineers need to translate product and system requirements from less technical stakeholders to the engineering team to achieve company goals. A true DevOps engineer thrives on building rapport with different team members and collaborating to meet deadlines and finish projects on time.
DevOps Team Roles
Now that we understand the basics of a DevOps engineer’s job, we can dive into their team structure that constantly improves the CI/CD pipeline. In order to develop a strong foundation in your recruited team, a DevOps Engineer must know each job below like the back of their hands.
Release Manager
This individual needs a keen eye for detail as they keep production at a high level to make sure the team achieves their goals, while customer satisfaction is met.
Security Engineer
Your security engineer will work in cahoots with your Release manager to ensure customer safety is met. They also focus on security aspects of the team, including creating firewalls to protect classified customer and company information.
The Stakeholder
The Stakeholder knows what a customer wants first, hopefully from first-hand experience in talking to customers to keep business flowing. This person on the team usually has final approval on deciding whether a project has been completed so it can be released to users and customers. The Stakeholder initiates projects while enforcing deadlines and requirements to ensure the team achieves the right business outcomes and adheres to a certain quality of work.
How DevOps Engineers Work with the Team
DevOps engineers work in conjunction with developers to ensure that they have the right technology to complete their goals in a timely fashion. In order to reinforce security, members of your engineering team will put on their Release Manager and Security Engineer hats and update any necessary tools and systems to ensure safety. In order to meet project goals, DevOps engineers will also keep the StakeHolder in the loop since some delays and difficulties may become apparent as work progresses. Now that we know the team makeup of a DevOps Engineer, we can start recruiting for them.
How to Recruit DevOps Engineers
Since DevOps Engineers’ roles can fall into any and all of the above areas, they’re expected to have a broad range of skills — from coding languages to general application knowledge. In tech, you usually see a database administrator specializing in databases or web developers specializing in web development. In DevOps that doesn’t happen.
DevOps Engineers need to work across many different pieces of software, applications and environments, and do it all at a high level of skill. They’re an army of one who need the communication skills to work with many. As a recruiter, it’s imperative to know what skills and specific DevOps tools your team uses to successfully recruit candidates. Below you will find even more resources to help you with your search.
Resources for Technical Recruiting
Since DevOps jobs can span a multitude of skills and responsibilities, we’ve curated a couple resources below to help you learn more about this important role.
Periodic Table of DevOps
To help with organizing and understanding the diverse world of technology and tools used in DevOps, XebiaLabs created the Periodic Table of DevOps. It’s a great resource to use when assessing a candidate’s experience by showing the proximity of one tool to another for the same job. This can help technical recruiters understand the relationship between tools and find candidates that fit your talent persona profile.
Recruiting Innovation’s Free DevOps Technical Toolkit
Get a holistic view of the DevOps role and what’s needed to successfully recruit a candidate with our free DevOps Technical Toolkit Class. This free class will start with Cloud, CI/CD deployment and make even more technical concepts fully understandable for technical recruiters to fill roles 4.5 days faster. Sign up today to make recruiting DevOps roles your new superpower!