What a devOps engineer really does
You keep the software shipping and the servers running, and you are the one called when a release breaks production.
FieldTech and design
Preparation (O*NET Job Zone)Medium preparation needed
What the work involves
What fills a typical week for devOps engineers, built from O*NET occupation data.
- Fix broken builds and deployment pipelines so developers can ship their changes.
- Change infrastructure configuration in code, review it with teammates and roll it out safely.
- Watch dashboards and alerts for performance problems and decide what needs adjusting.
- Make sure backups run and that you can actually restore from them.
- Troubleshoot production problems with developers, then write down what happened.
- Tighten security settings such as access, secrets and network rules.
- Answer questions from developers and support staff about why something is slow or failing.
What the days are like
What people in the job know
- Mistakes reach a lot of people at once, so you learn to change things in small, reversible steps. Consequence of error: 23% extremely serious, 43% very serious (O*NET Work Context, 15-1244.00)
- It is a team job; you are constantly unblocking other people rather than working alone. Work with or contribute to a work group or team: 52% extremely important (15-1244.00), 71% extremely important (15-1252.00) (O*NET Work Context)
- Phone calls and chats are a daily part of the job; you spend real time talking people through problems, not only typing in a terminal. Telephone conversations: 77% every day; Contact with others: 50% constant contact (O*NET Work Context, 15-1244.00)
- Backups and recovery are a bigger part of the job than people expect. 'Perform data backups and disaster recovery operations', importance 84, Core, rank 2 (O*NET Tasks, 15-1244.00)
- Deadline crunches are regular but not constant: about half say they hit one weekly or more, and most others monthly. Time pressure: 17% every day, 33% once a week or more, 37% once a month or more (O*NET Work Context, 15-1244.00)
How people get into it
The primary O*NET code is Job Zone 3: its survey shows 30% of new hires need an associate's degree, 27% a bachelor's degree and 20% a post secondary certificate, plus one to two years of on the job experience. The software developer code it is paired with is Job Zone 4. In practice people usually move into DevOps from system administration or software development rather than straight out of school.
The Firstday trial, easy to hard
Three simulated tasks at Fernpath, a fictional company, with AI coworkers who message you, react to your work and coach with questions. Nobody scores you.
What the trial can't show: The trial uses simplified config files, logs and dashboards with prepared outcomes instead of a real cloud account or cluster. It cannot show nights on call, slow multi week migrations, cloud billing reviews, or how much time goes into reading vendor documentation. Code changes are scored on intent and correctness, not run against real infrastructure. On call load varies a lot by company; Google's SRE guidance caps on call work at 25% of an engineer's time and suggests rotations of six to eight people, while a three person platform team like Fernpath's usually shares on call with developers.
Reading about it is one thing.
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Job details on this page are built from O*NET OnLine, 15-1244.00. This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.