DevOps Engineer… a Hero or a Myth?

It’s neither and both.

Neither, as DevOps Engineer is a human like everyone else, you, me, the colleague sitting next to you or passing by in a hallway. As well, DevOps Engineer is not a myth, as it exists in real life.

And both, as DevOps Engineer is as one from Marvel Universe, with his/hers own superpower, just like the Developer, or the QA Engineer, the Security Engineer, or the IT Operations Engineer, or… And a myth, as the stories as what DevOps Engineer actually is, varying from being a Software Developer and IT Operations Engineer at same time, to being only a cultural philosophy and practices, or…

In reality, a DevOps Engineer, is actually the bridge that was created to remove and/or connect the silos in which earlier Software Developers , QA Engineers , Security Engineers, Sys Admins, Network Engineers and IT Operations Engineers worked or sometimes still work.

The DevOps engineer is here, to work with Software Developers in order to understand how to application that needs to be deployed is coded and works, to automate it’s deployment, to create the infrastructure as code and as well automate it’s deployment, to incorporate some level of security into all of it working sometimes alongside with Security Engineers, to introduce on some level automated tests working with QA Engineers when applicable, to as well deploy the monitoring and possibly self-healing, and afterwards handover the system to the IT Operations Engineers and work together with them on improvements, further automation and incident management. I am pretty sure, that along this path, I have missed to list some activities, but you get the picture.

The “bridging” comes, both from the moment that the DevOps Engineer works in parallel with all others, Software Developers , QA Engineers , Security Engineers, IT Operations Engineers, etc… and has the ability to look and understand the system from all sides and from different perspectives, but in same time by connecting all of them into a single team/group while trying to “translate” the different perspectives from one to another, with a sole purpose of making easier and faster delivery of system (solution) in question (initially and afterwards) , system (solution) which is more stable, with higher quality and performance , more secured, and more easily operable.

DevOps Engineer can come from different backgrounds. It can be a former Software Developer, or Sys Admin, or Network Engineer, or IT Operations engineer, or… And he/she builds the skillset along the way, in the CI/CD tooling, Infrastructure as a code languages, Cloud and On-prem hosting providers, Containers and container orchestration, Networking, Monitoring, etc… Oh, no, the DevOps Engineer is neither all-mighty, nor all-knowing, but he/she has a touch here and there with all of the listed, sometimes much more, and usually a qualified/full expertise in only some of them.

Being a DevOps engineer is a challenge, especially given the expanded technology stack one needs to be in touch, have some knowledge or be expert in, and as well have constant communication and work with different engineer profiles already listed above (not to forget the Service Delivery and Project managers) on almost daily level while trying to find “the middle ground” between them and/or implement everyone’s requirement. Let’s clear out, the challenge is not more than the every day’s challenge all other engineer profiles have, but it is a different one, as they all other are from each other. But, working with DevOps engineers closely, I can tell you, if you want an adventures and never boring life, becoming a DevOps engineer is for sure a path in that direction…