What should you check when you hire DevOps engineers?

DevOps Engineer is a highly demanding job today and it is extremely difficult to find DevOps developers easily compared to other engineers. They are not only expensive but are very scarce compared to the heavy demand. Most of the institutes don’t specifically educate engineers about DevOps practices which leads to candidates opting for software engineering rather than choosing DevOps. Owing to the dearth of this skill set in the industry, it is hence extremely important to vet the candidates thoroughly. Here are some of the best practices to follow in order to hire the most talented and high-performing DevOps engineers.??

Competencies DevOps engineers need?

It's always necessary to have a cross-disciplinary skill set that could cover a variety of DevOps processes. Hence, let's look at the list of skills a DevOps Engineer possesses and the organization that can benefit from them.?

Planning and Administration

DevOps engineers are expected to have complete knowledge of the system, techniques, and tools to use. Also, one should be familiar with various platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Compute Engine. A little pre-planning helps keep things streamlined. Once things are planned, there are defined objectives to be fulfilled, and the development can work just on time.

DevOps Culture Adoption

DevOps engineers must get their hands on a set of best practices of DevOps that will help make them stand apart. DevOps has a transitional shift to the industry and it's more about automating, measuring, and sharing in the name of increased efficiency. This ability enables engineers to flawlessly organize and carry out activities by keeping up with the latest trends.??

Configuration Maintenance

They must gain knowledge of the IaaS side of virtual machines, their instances, configuration, and setup. Ansible, Chef, Puppet, and SaltStack are some of the most well-liked choices available in this area that should also be considered. Along with this, many organizations have the majority of their infrastructure running on Windows, one master in tools of supporting choice.?

Automation in Pipeline

DevOps engineers should be familiar with famous software automation tools, such as Chef and Puppet that would help them in automating and implementing the CI/CD pipelines. More importantly, by keeping an up-to-date automated infrastructure, you will be able to work successfully with your company's system administration team.

Cloud Skills?

AWS, Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE), and others are the major cloud platforms on which DevOps engineers should focus. They should understand how to use the many services accessible on these platforms, as well as how to integrate them. This helps your organization manage ample data by streamlining your process.?

Configuration Management?

An efficient DevOps engineer would be able to manage servers on many systems, such as computer hardware and software by utilizing scripts. This guarantees that a product's performance, functional, and physical characteristics are consistent with its requirements, design, and operational information. Altogether, this helps in automating the management process in aligning with the software requirements.

Security management

Along with all the other benefits, security is the factor that brings all the aspects of DevOps together. Development (Dev), IT operations (Ops) and security (Sec) all of this goes hand in hand with completing a system. The DevOps engineers efficiently deliver applications and services at high velocity and securely.

Continuous integration

DevOps is all about automating the development and operations process in which integration is vital. DevOps engineers are efficient enough to offer products in minimum time without compromising quality or end-user experience. They can automate build processes and distribute software upgrades quickly.

Key to Form an Effective DevOps Team

All these benefits such as automation, continuous delivery, and integration are good but can only be achieved with a DevOps team. The current rise in DevOps is due to its practices along with the team. Now that we know what benefits DevOps engineers bring to your organization in order to better implement DevOps , it is time to know how to recruit the team.

Resources Hiring

The first step for any process would be the hiring of resources. As the whole focus of DevOps is dependent on its team it is important to ensure that the organization has the best resources. A DevOps team consists of profiles such as DevOps Manager, Automation Architect, Software Developer, Tester, Security Engineer, and so on. Thus, while recruiting the team, one must consider all these roles and hire resources with a multidisciplinary skillset. Along with this, a team must have soft skills as communication is the key to the success of an efficient team.

Aligning of Goals with Team

Once the team is onboard, generally, organizations rush to implement practices, which can be the reason for your project's failure. It is critical to match your project goals with the DevOps team; this ensures that the team goals and organizational vision do not conflict and function in sync. This will help organizations to empower their team members to focus on business objectives rather than merely working on given projects or tasks.?

Tools & Structure formation

In further steps, constructing the team structure is required to begin the DevOps journey. After this, they start implementing the DevOps practices like continuous integration and delivery to automated testing and continuous deployment. Also, to start these processes, the selection of appropriate tools is a must. There are ample tools available for various DevOps practices of developing, testing, and deploying. Hence it is important to select appropriate tools.

Some tools which can be useful for your DevOps process:

• Git - It is one of the best version control tools. Version control allows developers to keep track of all changes and updates to their code so that if something goes wrong, they can roll back to a previous version. Git is easy to implement and compatible with many protocols. Git includes three storage tools:? GitHub and GitLab, as well as the source code hosting service, BitBucket.
• Maven - Automation Maven, one of the top build tools, that offers more than just an automation build framework. Maven can build and manage projects in Java, C#, Ruby, Scala, and other programming languages using Project Object Model (POM) plugins. Using Maven one can benefit from an easy build and monitoring process along with automation. It also features a rich migration process.
• Jenkins - It is an integration DevOps tool used for continuous integration. It is the best choice in the category as it holds both internal and external plugins. Jenkins is an open-source Java-based automation CI server that is in supports various operating systems. It is compatible with both CI/CD integration, and because both Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery are critical procedures, it is a must-have DevOps tool.
• Puppet - Puppet is another open-source DevOps solution that leverages declarative programming for system setup, deployments, and server administration. It is arranged into reusable modules enabling quick construction of pre-configured servers and is platform-independent.
• Kubernetes - Kubernetes is a platform for automation management that allows developers to deploy containerized applications across Kubernetes clusters. It is the choice of many as Kubernetes automates processes such as container configuration, scaling, networking, security, and more. This in all makes the system production efficient and faster in execution.??
• Slack - It is said that “Communication is the key” and streamlined workplace communication and collaboration are the factors that affect the success of your project. When it comes to the selection of communication tools, Slack is the name you hear first. It is one of the most used and popular tools due to its features. Slack provides free, standard, and enterprise premium versions to meet the demands of a diverse spectrum of clients.

Team Effectiveness

Appropriate resources have been hired, who have been backed up with effective team structure and have control over supportive tools. However, one cannot just wait and expect the results. It is important to check the deliverables and have track of how effectively the team is working. Along with the outcomes, it is also important to look into team collaboration and communication which helps avoid any gaps. There are numerous approaches and actions to follow in order to organize DevOps teams.

What is the cost of employing a DevOps engineer?

The cost of employing a DevOps engineer may vary depending on the experience of a DevOps engineer as well as their technical expertise and geographic location. Here we have a record by Edureka , which will help us know the cost depending on the job roles.

Also, depending on the statistics the cost you might accept as per Arc

How can OpenXcell help you with it?

OpenXcell is the leading DevOps service provider. DevOps Developers at OpenXcell deliver feature-rich applications using best practices. Our cost-effective and time-saving DevOps development services can help you with DevOps consulting , DevOps cloud management, DevOps transformation, platform engineering, CI/CD development, and an array of DevOps services that can help you achieve the best results.?

The communication conducted is transparent and effective keeping DevOps practices as a lead. DevOps Developers at Openxcell naturally feel a part of your team since we offer an open atmosphere. Our Developer helps streamline the DevOps process by identifying the cause of a problem and prioritizing tickets based on context. Not only this, you may leverage many other benefits. Get in touch to know more…

Conclusion

Onboarding an efficient DevOps team will open many perspectives of better performance for your organization. With the above-mentioned key tips for hiring a DevOps team , you can hire candidates that can effectively boost your development process. Make sure to hire the right candidates who can work in alignment with your project's goals and are skilled enough to add value to the project.