As a DevOps, the top priority is to deliver high-value features in short periods of time through cross-team collaboration. As a result, a DevOps engineer needs specific interpersonal, tooling, and technical skills in order to be successful. In other words, a DevOps engineer requires a mix of “soft” and “hard” skills.

Communication and Collaboration Skills are critical factors.

Communication is critical, but so too is the ability to collaborate. DevOps engineers should be team players and support their colleagues throughout sprints or software iterations. This is about more than just being a good teammate — you should also have the skills to mentor and advise team members on the best ways to deliver code, what tools to use when coding, and how to test the latest features.

Specific Programming Senior Coding Skills

Senior programming skills are required for all development approaches, and DevOps engineers maintain a unique set of coding responsibilities. Rather than specialize in a single scripting language, a DevOps engineer should be familiar with multiple languages, such as Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, PHP, Bash, and others. A DevOps engineer must feel comfortable writing and debugging issues in languages such as those, as well as in OS environments.

Collaborate and understand the QA Teams

DevOps engineers must be in sync with QA teams at all times. All testing activities, including automated and manual, must be known and visible to DevOps engineers to ensure the organization meets sprint goals for release dates and outcomes. The DevOps engineer should:

• Understand the testing activities that happen
• Know the history of testing throughout the CI/CD cycle
• Understand frameworks/environments that are led by QA