5 methods to increase your marketability as a DevOps engineer

The DevOps job path is not only one of the most lucrative, but also one of the most personally fulfilling of the various IT career paths available today.

How to Make Yourself a Valuable DevOps Engineer

But how can you genuinely develop the skill sets and expertise you require, much alone get your personal brand out there to assist you secure a good DevOps engineering position? Hiring managers want to have the proper people on their teams to prevent the all-too-common DevOps errors. Here are my top tips as a committed Devops recruiter.

1. Begin cross-training immediately.

Whether you're a developer or an operations veteran, now is the time to start learning skills beyond the scope of your present work, especially if you're new to DevOps.

Developers by training have an advantage over operations professionals when transitioning to DevOps engineering jobs, not only because of the necessity for developing in-house tools and scripts, but also because they are more likely to understand developers' everyday needs.

It's ideal if a DevOps engineer is also a developer, rather than merely an IT professional. A DevOps engineer with a development background will have greater expertise with the tools that developers use—and may use this knowledge to make things more efficient. The idea is to seek for ways to adapt principles from the prior position to the current one.

Gain hands-on experience as a software developer by creating tools rather than software. Consider any of the open-source projects created by Netflix. Current developers who want to work in DevOps should get involved in whatever their team does that concerns operations. If your team isn't doing any of these things, head over to the operations team and observe a couple deployments.

Meanwhile, although managers prefer coders, you may also become a sysadmin. All you'll need to do is become serious about developing your scripting talents. Many sysadmins have not previously been asked to automate provisioning, setup, and deployment to this level. It may be difficult for them to develop the necessary scripting skills.

This includes putting in the effort to learn Chef or Puppet scripting, being familiar with Linux and shell environments, and doing all you can to obtain programming expertise in scripting languages like Bash, Perl, Python, and Ruby.

Furthermore, you can expect to have to record your work as code and invest time understanding automation tools to enable you automate provisioning and deployments.

2. Improve your abilities in your current employment to prepare for the career you want.

Many DevOps engineering opportunities want candidates who have previously lived and breathed the DevOps lifestyle. IT veterans who do not have a DevOps title will find it much simpler to secure one of these roles by carving out DevOps-minded duties and tasks from their present, conventional function, regardless of whether they officially alter their business card.

3. Automation: Demonstrate that you can get a lot done with a little.

Can you get a lot done in a short amount of time? DevOps engineers that utilise automated technologies to manage servers and deployments are efficient with their time.

Mastering automation technologies and methods is likely the most significant thing aspiring DevOps engineers can do to boost their earning potential and marketability.

Investigate automation. You'll never have time to learn new things if you're stuck doing tiresome physical labour, and you'll probably be unhappy. Automation also necessitates a thorough grasp of what you're automating, so each time you work on automation, you're gaining new insights into the technologies you're supporting.

4. Build your personal brand through community participation.

Building intrinsic abilities and finding a means to exhibit them are both important aspects of career marketability. Participating in the dynamic and expanding DevOps community allows you to kill two birds with one stone. There is no one method to achieve this; it all depends on a person's abilities and interests. It may involve speaking at business events or, for you introverts, writing blogs and remaining connected with colleagues via online forums and the like. Participating in an open-source project can also have a significant influence.

Participation in open-source DevOps initiatives is a great way to demonstrate what you know and what you can achieve. While speaking and presenting at meetings are crucial, many projects now have public Slack channels where you can join and answer questions—this is a great chance for visibility and personal branding.

While marketability is important, DevOps engineers who don't consider community engagement just as a means to advance their careers are more likely to benefit from their experiences.

Participation in the DevOps community should be treated as a method to interact with other practitioners, obtain guidance, and get exposure to new ideas. Everyone in the community brings their own excitement to the table and may provide a unique support system.

5. Show inquiry empathy & curiosity

Curiosity and empathy are two of the most significant soft-skill attributes a prospective DevOps engineer may possess.

Demonstrating these two characteristics is a strong indicator that a potential employee is passionate about DevOps, the organisation, and their job within both.

Of course, demonstrating the former is easier than demonstrating the latter. Curiosity may be displayed by developing a broad variety of technical skills and, more significantly, by mastering the art of asking the correct questions when addressing issues and instigating positive change.

Outwardly displaying empathy might be more challenging. A lot of it has to do with creating ear muscle memory, because listening is an important element of developing empathic tendencies. However, one way to get there is to put yourself in circumstances where you must communicate with people.

What are you doing to advance your DevOps career?

Do you foresee DevOps in your future? Perhaps you are already following some of the above-mentioned paths, or you are using various routes to get there. Are you attempting a method not covered here?

Contact us now for help finding your next devops career or the perfect devops for your team.