Is DevOps a Lucrative Career Option?

Like Agile, DevOps has come a long way and helped global organizations boost their software development processes. As time-to-market has become critical in application development, business leaders must establish a solid cultural foundation and find the best approach for each project.   

While frameworks like Scrum and SAFe have helped cross-functional teams increase the velocity of software delivery, they don’t consider a significant aspect - The operations team. DevOps helped solve this problem. 

DevOps is an approach to software development that integrates the processes between the operation and the development team to foster cross-functional communication and increase the organization’s ability to deliver software and application. 

Due to its streamlined approach, the demand for DevOps experts has risen over recent years. In this article, we will explore the demand for DevOps talent, the future career opportunities for DevOps experts, and decide whether a DevOps certification is worth it.

The Rising Demand For DevOps Talent

Researchers indicate that the demand for DevOps platforms will reach $11 Billion by 2027, a significant jump from $4 Billion in 2020. This platform comprises tools and technologies to help developers automate, integrate, and verify code, enabling organizations to accelerate time-to-market products. 

As a growing number of organizations seek to integrate these platforms and use other advanced DevOps tools, they need DevOps experts. And this is why aspirants are finding the DevOps career path lucrative. 

Let’s look over the following estimates to learn how much DevOps experts earn in the USA: 

• Employment websites such as Bulletin report that in 2022, an average DevOps engineer earns around $127,740. 
• According to Talent.com, the average salary of an entry-level AWS DevOps consultant in the USA starts at $125,000. While those with 2-3 years of experience earn around $141,600 annually. 
• Leading recruitment websites report that the total pay of an automation architect in the USA comes to $149,881 per year. Experts can earn around $232000 per year, depending upon their skill set. 
• Rober Half recently stated that DevOp engineers are the 2nd highest-paid professionals in the tech industry. 

For more insights into DevOps, read this guide to learn the fundamentals. 

The Future of DevOps And What It Means For Tech Professionals

Agile is evolving and has now found usage across multiple industries. Similarly, organizations are combining DevOps practices with other technologies and solutions to create better value.  

Let’s look at industry trends to gain better insights:

• Many organizations are incorporating Agile and DevOps practices with their security control to ensure that their software development and deployment processes remain safe. Reports show that the global DevSecOps market is growing at a CAGR rate of 31.5% and will reach $23.16 Billion by 2029. 
• A recent report by Bain & Company states that 90% of organizations say that DevOps is a strategic priority but fail to adopt the framework due to a lack of talented people. 
• The same study says that tech leaders are looking at new DevOps areas, such as DataOps, MLOps, and more, to scale their data analytics abilities. 

What Does This Mean for Tech Professionals?

From the above figures, it is clear that the field of DevOps is evolving. As more companies rely on the framework to innovate their software development function, tech professionals should update their skills to keep up with the demand. 

With the global DevOps market evolving, you need to amp your knowledge of the framework and understand the roles and responsibilities of each title. At a basic level, you should know how to optimize the organizational value stream with DevOps and other emerging technologies.

4 Steps to Create a DevOps Career Roadmap!

‘DevOps’ may be a buzzword for many tech and non-tech professionals, but few know what it means. Whether you are facing career stagnation or want to aim for a high-paying job, a career in DevOps can accelerate growth. Essentially, it all boils down to how you use your skills to help organizations adopt DevOps at scale so they can serve customers better. 

And to develop such skills, you should prepare a DevOps career roadmap. 

This roadmap will help you put yourself on a successful DevOps career path and help in beating the competition. Here are the five steps you can follow to create this roadmap:

1. Get Certified As a DevOps Practioner 

The first step in building a career in DevOps is knowing the basics. Interactive online courses can help you become a certified DevOps practitioner and learn how to bridge the gap between development and operations.

Here are the top benefits of getting certified: 

• Understand how successful DevOps enables strategic business objectives. 
• Learn the latest DevOps solutions and tools to produce the fastest and most accurate results.
• Explore the different roles and levels of DevOps in the organization and learn how to apply the CALMR approach. 
• Develop your skill set to help organizations optimize value streams and eliminate bottlenecks. 

2. Spend Some Time Building Technical And Non-Technical Skills

After you have mastered the basics, it’s time to switch things up. Each role in the DevOps field requires technical skills, so be sure to research the current market scenario and prepare for the desired job title accordingly. 

For instance, if you wish to become a DevOps engineer or an automation architect, you need to have a technical skill set comprising practical knowledge about coding, cloud computing tools, networking, and data analytics. Apart from technical skills, it is also critical to explore the cultural aspects of DevOps, such as communication and collaboration. 

It also helps to learn the functionalities of different DevOps automation tools, such as GitHub, Jenkins, and GitLab, for continuous software delivery. 

3. Study Different DevOps Methodologies

Like Agile, DevOps has different methodologies you should refer to if you want to build a career in the field. Here’s a brief overview of some of the popular ones!

• Kanban: A Kanban board can help the DevOps team add some clarity to their workflow. It will help them to create products by focusing on continual delivery and eliminating distractions. 
• SAFe: Combining SAFe and DevOps enables development and operation teams to optimize end-to-end value streams. With this goal, organizations can adopt the CAMLR approach in a SAFe organization.

4. Learn the Principles of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery (CD) and continuous integration (CI) are the crucial principles of DevOps. Since the framework requires multiple teams to work together simultaneously on a project, you need to prioritize the CD and CI principles and tools for faster time-to-market. 

Here’s what they mean in the software development world: 

• Continuous Integration: It puts emphasis on testing automation tools to check whether the application has bugs or errors. Developers store their code in a shared repository and run automated tests to improve software quality. 
• Continuous Delivery: This expands upon continuous integration, where code changes are automatically deployed in a testing environment. At this stage, developers have tested the application from multiple dimensions before deploying it to customers. 

Start Your DevOps Career Journey Today!

The statistics for the future scope of DevOps look promising. However, if you are getting started on a DevOps career path, you will encounter many challenges. The good news is that with proper training and study, you can resolve them easily. 

As one of the leading training providers of DevOps in the USA, ATC offers a Certified SAFe® DevOps Practitioner training program to help you understand how the framework operates in a SAFe organization and how you can build quality with continuous delivery. Drop in a message here to get started today.