DevOps Engineer skills

Essential skills

Linux and operating systems: Employers check these through technical questions or tasks involving command-line tools, permissions, processes, and troubleshooting.
Networking fundamentals: Employers may ask you to explain DNS, HTTP, firewalls, load balancing, or how you would diagnose a connectivity issue.
Scripting and automation: Employers check your ability to write or review scripts in languages such as Bash or Python, often through a practical exercise.
Version control: Employers may ask how you use Git branches, commits, pull requests, and conflict resolution in team workflows.
Cloud fundamentals: Employers assess how you work with cloud resources through scenario questions or discussion of projects you have built.
CI/CD concepts: Employers may ask you to describe a pipeline and how you would handle failed builds, testing, deployments, or rollbacks.

Infrastructure as code: Employers review configuration files or ask how you make infrastructure repeatable, reviewable, and safe to change.
Containers and orchestration: Employers may ask you to explain how you build, deploy, and troubleshoot containerised applications.
Monitoring and observability: Employers check whether you can choose useful metrics, logs, and alerts, and investigate a system problem.
Configuration management: Employers may ask how you keep systems consistent across environments and manage configuration changes.
Security practices: Employers assess your approach to access controls, secrets, patching, and security checks in delivery workflows.
Reliability and incident response: Employers may use a scenario to see how you identify impact, restore service, and prevent repeat incidents.
Databases and data services: Employers may ask about backups, availability, performance, or how applications connect to data stores.

Clear communication: Employers check this through interviews, written exercises, and how clearly you explain technical decisions.
Collaboration: Employers ask for examples of working with development, security, or operations teams and may ask references about teamwork.
Problem-solving: Employers assess how you break down an unfamiliar issue during technical exercises or scenario questions.
Ownership: Employers look for examples of following work through, including testing, documentation, and addressing problems after release.
Adaptability: Employers may ask how you have learned a new tool or adjusted to changing priorities.
Calm under pressure: Employers may use an incident scenario to understand how you prioritise, communicate, and make decisions.

Automated a deployment workflow with testing and rollback steps, reducing manual work and making releases more consistent.
Built repeatable infrastructure using code, with documented changes and separate settings for development and production.
Improved monitoring by adding actionable alerts and dashboards, then used them to diagnose and resolve a service issue.

Practise the fundamentals: Use a Linux environment to work with files, processes, permissions, networking tools, and shell scripts.
Build a small delivery project: Put a simple application under version control, add tests, and create a pipeline to build and deploy it.
Learn infrastructure as code: Start with a small setup, keep the configuration in version control, and practise reviewing changes before applying them.
Explore containers and cloud services: Deploy a small application, then practise checking logs, network access, resource use, and service health.
Practise troubleshooting: Create safe, simple faults in a test environment and write down how you found and fixed each one.
Improve communication: Document project decisions, write clear runbooks, and practise explaining technical work to people with different backgrounds.

See which skills you still need for your target role.