If you’re interested in exploring effective solutions, consider reviewing this comprehensive list of top DevOps automation tools to determine which ones best complement your workflow. Start your career path in DevOps engineering by working on some DevOps projects. We believe that you would be learning all the topics properly and will try your best to become a successful DevOps engineer.

Popular IaC Tools

DevOps engineers bridge development and IT operations by automating tasks, managing CI/CD, and working with cloud platforms. To stand out, focus on real-world project experience and earn certifications like AWS or Kubernetes. Hands-on learning remains the most effective way to grow in this field. They work to streamline and automate the deployment, integration, and management of software applications and infrastructure. All with the goal of improving collaboration, efficiency, and reliability across the entire software development lifecycle.

It covers continuous integration, delivery, dependency management, and monitoring. And so DevOps Engineers will also set up monitoring and logging solutions solutions to track the performance, availability, and security of software applications and infrastructure. In this journey of learning DevOps, we will be proceeding further by choosing any one of the two languages i.e Python OR Go lang programming language. As both Python and Go lang are easy-to-learn languages, they both have easy-to-understand syntax and have a large scope in the future.

How to Become a DevOps Engineer From a Developer’s Perspective

In a lot of scenarios, you will face some problems during the deployment. Arjun is Program marketing manager at UpGrad for the Software development program. Prior to UpGrad, he was a part of the French ride-sharing unicorn BlaBlaCar in India.

DevOps Engineers often work with databases as part of their responsibilities, such as managing infrastructure configurations, monitoring database performance, and troubleshooting issues. Finally, learn System Design and Architecture so that you can understand the bigger picture and have a more holistic view of how software systems are created. It also allows you to orchestrate complex infrastructure setups and dependencies by defining relationships between resources, dependencies, and configurations using Terraform's configuration language (HCL). As you go through the course, make sure to complete all the projects inside. It’s the best way to apply what you learn, and you can use them as examples of your skills later on when you are applying for work. In Computer Science at WGU has three specializations for students to choose from, giving them the opportunity to focus on an area that is meaningful for their career and life.

It also ensures the developed application is portable across different platforms. Learning networking fundamentals becomes vital to the DevOps team when working with software components constantly communicating with other services. Knowledge of networks comes in handy when setting up resources in the public cloud. At a minimum, you should clearly understand standard protocols(TCP/IP, UDP), routing, IP addressing, subnetting, and ports. Procuring hardware to deploy the software is not always feasible and beneficial. Furthermore, once you purchase the hardware, you need more time and resources to manage the new hardware.

Some important things you should learn:

• DevOps might look daunting for startups with specific resources, but to implement these practices as much as possible on our budget.
• Once you understand the DevOps culture, you will stop saying that "CI/CD and infrastructure automation is DevOps."
• You need to understand the basic concepts of distributed systems because most tools that you use for microservices are distributed in nature.
• As a part of their skill set, having an understanding of this powerful orchestration tool will enable them to scale those apps quickly and efficiently.

Don’t limit yourself, either, if you do have a solid grasp of the entire procedure and want to learn more. DevOps engineers who are passionate about learning will succeed in this field. There is always a wealth of knowledge — like books — to consume in a field that is expanding like DevOps.

Individuals should engage with lively DevOps communities through online forums, social media groups and conferences. Network with other DevOps professionals, seek mentorship and learn from their insights and experiences. In a DevOps community, you can also volunteer to contribute on online forums to build your network.

Also, an understanding of API is a basic prerequisite to learning Kubernetes. If you are a beginner to container toolsets, you can learn this after gaining a good amount of knowledge in container orchestration and microservices-based architecture. You can take a look at the best service mesh tools for microservices. Infrastructure automation tools have become an essential aspect of every organization. Also, all modern infrastructure deployments follow the immutable infrastructure model. Cloud computing and virtualization are the basic building blocks of today's DevOps practices.

It basically follows the IaC -"Infrastructure as a Code" principle to define and manage the infrastructure resources. At this career stage, you’ll spend more time leading others than directly working on applications and other projects. After gaining experience as an engineering manager, you may qualify to become a senior engineering manager or director. Configuration management tools like Chef, Ansible, Jenkins, and Docker help DevOps engineers complete essential tasks and manage configuration. You can automate maintenance and other actions using configuration management tools to increase team efficiency and spend less time on tedious tasks. Developers, operations teams, and security teams use logging systems to monitor, troubleshoot, and audit applications and infrastructure.

OSs run the servers that house the team’s deployed apps in addition to the local machines that the team uses to communicate and execute activities. I would definitely recommend a Structured DevOps Engineer Course because it is not only about theoretical knowledge, it is more about the hands-on knowledge. Also, a DevOps Engineer is not a person who just understands various tools. It is more about how and where you can use various Development, Testing, and Deployment technologies to get the maximum benefit (Architecting an SDLC Solution). Begin by establishing your objectives and organizing into short-term, actionable targets.

Containerization & Orchestration Tools

AI and machine learning are making their way into the DevOps world, enabling smarter automation in areas like anomaly detection, root cause analysis, and performance optimization. AI-driven tools can analyze patterns and provide insights to improve system performance without the need for manual intervention. Target companies with a strong DevOps culture, tailoring your applications to highlight how your skills align with their business goals. Engage with companies via networking, LinkedIn, and industry events to build relationships with decision-makers before applying.

Clear separation between experimental and production configurations, along with automated rollback, helps maintain overall system integrity. Using IaC tools with state management like Terraform enables version control over infrastructure configurations. Changes are peer-reviewed and applied in staging before production using change sets or plans. Rollbacks are handled by reverting to previous commits in version control or using tagged infrastructure snapshots. Automated rollback logic is also embedded in CI/CD workflows to trigger if deployment health checks fail.

Additionally, audit logs and monitoring are set up to track access to sensitive credentials. Once the code is ready, it moves to testing, where automated and manual tests validate functionality, security, and performance. A DevOps lifecycle is a set of practices and processes that help organizations deliver software more quickly and reliably. The DevOps lifecycle typically includes planning, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and feedback. Finally, soft skills matter too—be ready to discuss how you collaborate with developers, handle incidents, and optimize deployment processes. DevOps is as much about culture and teamwork as it is about technical expertise, so showing you have a problem-solving mindset and an understanding of DevOps principles will set you apart in the interview.

How does a DevOps engineer ensure environment consistency across development, staging, and production?

In a DevOps environment, speed and efficiency are the most important things, but with DevSecOps, having a secure pipeline becomes a priority as well. This extended practice now makes sure that vulnerability assessments, compliance checks, and code scanning are core activities of the workflow from the very beginning. The main difference between DevSecOps and DevOps is in their names, one of them includes security in their focus while the other doesn't. A significant area in this practice how to become a devops engineer is Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), which automatically tests and deploys code changes with minimal human input.

What is Cloud Engineer?

Most employers prefer candidates with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related fields. However, practical experience and proficiency in DevOps tools can often outweigh formal education. Shift-left is a software development practice that involves moving tasks and processes earlier in the development lifecycle. By shifting tasks left, teams can identify and address issues earlier in development, reducing the cost and effort required to fix them.

• You need to know how to mimic the development environment on your testing servers.
• DevOps Engineer ranks #2 on Glassdoor’s 50 Best Jobs in America rankings.
• Soft skills include communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and adaptability.
• The DevOps field is rapidly evolving with new tools, technologies and methodologies.
• Depending upon the complexity of the application, choosing the cloud instead of on-premise hardware can significantly reduce deployment time and cost.

AWS is one of the leading cloud providers and has a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and platform services that allow you to build, deploy, and manage applications and services at scale. You can also get the core knowledge and skills taught in a CS degree from online courses (I'll link to some resources in the step-by-step guide below). DevOps Engineers will also implement CI/CD pipelines to automate the build, testing, and deployment of software applications. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) doesn’t collect information on DevOps engineers yet, the job outlook is strong based on data of similar roles. For instance, the BLS estimates a 22% job growth for software developers from 2020 to 2030. This growth is much faster than average when compared to all occupations.