How to Become a DevOps Engineer: A Detailed Roadmap

The DevOps Engineer role has emerged as one of the high-demand profiles in the IT space. Competitive salaries, international exposure, and a direct influence on the efficiency of development and operations teams make it unsurprising that more and more professionals aspire to transition into a DevOps Engineer position. In this blog, we have outlined a detailed roadmap with top skills to learn and become a DevOps engineer.

What is a DevOps Engineer?

DevOps, or development and operations, is a framework or work philosophy that aims at developing software by establishing effective communication, integration, and collaboration among various departments. 

How to Become a DevOps Engineer

Here is a detailed roadmap to help you become a a DevOps engineer.

1. Learn Programming Languages

Master programming languages. Learn languages like Python, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, C/C++.

2. Know How Operating Systems Work

A DevOps engineer must know how operating systems work, their similarities and differences, most importantly, since they will run applications on servers. Linux is the most popular operating system. Any web application you are running, is most likely on a Linux server. Operating systems you must learn are:

• Linux: Ubuntu, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Debian
• Windows Server
• macOS 
• CoreOS
• RancherOS
• Alpine Linux

3. Concepts of the Operating System

DevOps engineers should understand the basic concepts of the OS and the infrastructure required to run an application. Master the following concepts:

• Process management 
• Sockets 
• Threads and concurrency
• Virtualization 
• File systems 
• Memory and storage
• Service management 

4. Security and Network Protocols

• HTTP & HTTPS 
• FTP
• Firewalls 
• SSH
• SSL/TLS
• IPsec and VPNs 
• Port Forwarding 
• SNMP
• Proxy servers

5. Know How to Monitor a Web Server 

A web server can host multiple sites and communicate with them. A DevOps engineer must know to monitor a server, and the popular tools are:

• Apache
• Nginx
• IIS
• Tomcat
• Caddy
• Istio
• Envoy
• Consul
• Linkerd

6. Learn about CI/CD Tools 

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery automates the software development lifecycle, enabling engineers to design fast, reliable, and high-quality software. Top CI/CD tools are:

• TravisCI
• GitHub
• GitLab
• Bamboo
• Jenkins
• TeamCity
• Azure DevOps

7. Infrastructure as Code

IaC automates infrastructure management by avoiding manual intervention. Top IaC tools for a beginner DevOps engineer are:

• Ansible
• Salt
• Chef
• Puppet
• Container orchestration
• Kubernetes
• Docker
• Terraform

8. Application Monitoring

Application monitoring measures availability, performance, and UX of an app, and resolves issues before it impacts the users. Some commonly used application monitoring tools include:

• New Relic
• Instana
• Datadog
• Dynatrace
• AppDynamics
• Raygun
• SolarWinds

9. Infrastructure Monitoring

Infrastructure monitoring is done by using tools to collect maximum data from different components, such as servers, databases, etc. It enables teams to make informed decisions. Some good infrastructure monitoring tools are: 

• Grafana
• Prometheus
• Zabbix 
• Nagios
• Datadog

10. Familiarity with Cloud Providers 

Additionally, a DevOps engineer should have experience in cloud and service providers like Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, among others.

DevOps Engineer Salary 

According to AmbitionBox, the salary range for a DevOps Engineer in India is Rs. 3.8 - 16 LPA. The average yearly compensation is Rs. 8.5 LPA.

Salaries of DevOps Engineers Across India