If you are building an app, you are probably wondering what is a DevOps engineer and the role they play. To many companies, the role of DevOps engineers is not clear. This comes as no surprise. After all, a DevOps engineer is someone who takes care of many crucial aspects of your application.
DevOps practices cover a number of tasks that seek to make the different stages of the software development lifecycle of your application more efficient. When implemented successfully, DevOps processes result in continuous delivery and integration through a collaborative environment. This helps accelerate code releases, facilitating the work of your software developers, and more importantly, it helps integrate how your development and operations teams work.
DevOps engineers have many different roles and responsibilities. If you want to find out more about what a DevOps engineer does, this article is for you.
What is DevOps?
It is important to understand the fundamental DevOps principles before going into the details of what a DevOps engineer does. You are probably familiar with the term, even if you don’t know exactly what it means.
DevOps is a number of things: a working culture, a set of automation tools, and most importantly, a number of software development best practices. This combination of elements helps software engineers and IT operations teams achieve an app’s project management goals in quick, secure, and cheap ways.
By merging your IT operations teams with your software development team through structured DevOps processes, your company can reduce pain points throughout the different stages of app development, all while delivering services faster and through continuous delivery.
In practice, a DevOps team makes sure your app’s software development lifecycle is taken care of. This means that you are in control of the development, implementation, and operations of your app. Rather than software developers and IT specialists working in isolated silos, your app’s development is done integrally through network operations where communication is fluid. This is very useful for daily operations as well as when the moment to scale comes.
One of the most famous DevOps tools is Kubernetes. Keep in mind that there are other important ones, and a DevOps engineer should know which ones are best for your app.
The Philosophy of DevOps Practices
The DevOps philosophy is all about efficiency and effectiveness. Configuration management tools, automation tools, and deployment tools are used by DevOps engineers to handle important app development processes.
A systematic management approach, process automation, and continuous delivery all have a positive impact in terms of the quality of your app. That way you can be sure that you will hit the market faster and with a top digital product. However, to do this, it is important for DevOps engineers to be prepared to work with cloud service providers like AWS, of which Koombea is a partner. Having a proper AWS configuration is key to your app development process.
A common best practice of top DevOps engineers for software development is a strong focus on Security and Quality Assurance (QA). That’s why, ideally, you want your software developers and IT members to have some knowledge and experience on app security and quality tests; a great DevOps engineer usually has some experience as a software tester. By integrating security and software testing within your operational practices, you can create a better workflow, facilitating each new software release.
What Is a DevOps Engineer?
A DevOps engineer is someone who integrates different aspects of the development process of your app, particularly in what relates to software development and infrastructure management. In other words, a successful DevOps engineer is able to merge two distinct but crucial aspects of your app.
Due to the various tasks a DevOps engineer takes care of, there is no specific job description. There are different DevOps engineer roles. However, we can easily state that a DevOps engineer focuses on the automation of server tasks involving tests and security matters. Nonetheless, they do not stop there.
Responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer
The responsibilities of a DevOps engineer may vary. These ultimately depend on the different DevOps job roles. However, they can be summarized in the following list of the most important DevOps responsibilities:
- Maintain a CI/CD process throughout your app’s different stages.
- Help guarantee a culture focused on security.
- Implement the right tools and automate processes.
- Make efficient use of your resources.
- Establish a constant communication environment.
- Embrace Agile principles.
DevOps Culture
One of the most important things a DevOps culture allows your company to do is implement a CI/CD mentality. Additionally, it helps to maintain a focus on communication across different teams.
Does a DevOps Engineer Matter?
The answer to this question is very straightforward. YES, a DevOps engineer matters a lot for any software-related project. A common mistake is to assume that only software development companies need DevOps engineers.
Any type of company that relies on software, particularly for automation, security, or scaling, can benefit directly from having at least one DevOps engineer in their team. As more companies rely on software to perform all sorts of tasks and processes, having the right system configurations becomes essential. Thus, implementing DevOps becomes a necessity.
Introducing an important software update or change means a potential risk to any business. With a DevOps engineer, companies can make incremental smaller updates more frequently to their software without compromising their operations.
Benefits of Having a DevOps Engineer
These are some of the benefits companies perceive from developing software with a DevOps engineer:
- Risk reduction: smaller updates make it easier to identify where mistakes or bugs could have occurred.
- Microservice architecture: apps can be deployed through various services, making work easier.
- Faster operations: teams can perform better thanks to standardization and CI/CD processes.
- Team culture: avoid siloed teams through an Agile culture and process integrations.
The development tools a DevOps engineer uses become very important to guarantee successful deployment and network operations. The same is true of other various automation tools used. They help automate many important processes, and most importantly, help you gain productivity.
Final Thoughts on What Is a DevOps Engineer
If you want to implement DevOps best practices in your company in order to improve your app, be sure to have at least one experienced DevOps engineer. Or, even better, find a strategic app development partner who can offer you the DevOps engineer skills your company needs.
