Key Soft Skills of Successful DevOps Engineers

It’s no surprise that DevOps professionals continue to be in high demand in our increasingly digital world. According to the DevOps Institute’s Upskilling: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report 2019 39% of participants across the globe, were seeking DevOps Engineers to join their companies.

Whilst this incessant demand for talent is great news for DevOps professionals, it’s important as a DevOps Engineer to ensure that your soft skills are just as polished as your technical skills.

Below we explore some of the key soft skills that are vital to your success as a DevOps Engineer…

Communication

Good communication skills are crucial when it comes to succeeding as a DevOps Engineer. Being able to identify issues and effectively communicate the best ways to solve them will make both yours and your teammates lifes easier.

Communicating effectively with different stakeholders and understanding the current challenges within the business is the first step to being able to successfully build a strategy and ultimately resolve issues. 

Flexibility 

In some ways, this goes hand-in-hand with communication. Your role as a DevOps Engineer involves working with different teams across the business, meaning you may need to be flexible and adapt your communication style dependant on who you’re working with.

Being flexible to working alongside different teams with different priorities, can be a challenge. There will undoubtedly be situations where there will be more than one task that urgently and needs attending to. Ensuring that you’re flexible in your approach, are able to juggle workloads, will certainly help towards your success as a DevOps Engineer.

Leadership

If you’re looking to advance your career to the top-level DevOps roles, then leadership skills are definitely going to be required for you to reach your ambitions. Being confident in your abilities and decisions, as well as being able to effectively manage and instruct a team in order to achieve business goals, will be crucial to your success.

Decision making 

In a busy environment, the ability to make the right decision quickly and confidently, is an extremely desirable trait employers are looking for. They want people who are able to lead them to achieve business objectives by making considered and assured decisions.

Passion

As a DevOps Engineer, your passion for the industry should be evident in your continual desire to look for ways to develop, expand your skills and continue learning. Passion for your work is something that employers will definitely be looking for. Not only this but if you’re passionate about what you do, it’s more likely that you’ll be successful. 

Resilience

The most successful DevOps Engineers embrace a changeable mindset. They are open to finding new and innovative solutions to problems and challenges. Rather than repeating processes blindly and adopting an ‘if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach, they will challenge situations, thinking innovatively to find improved ways of fixing issues. Building resilience and springing back from issues that might arise through the process.

 

Of course, the right technical skills are essential to succeeding in the world of DevOps, however, just like any role, soft skills are important too. Without the ability to effectively communicate, passion, a flexible and adaptable mindset and many other key traits, your success is likely to be limited beyond what you want to achieve in the DevOps world.

Are you a DevOps professional looking for your dream role? Speak with our specialist DevOps consultants to hear about the hottest DevOps jobs in the market.

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