DevOps engineer is the most-recruited job on LinkedIn

DevOps
Engineer is the most-recruited job on
LinkedIn.

WOCinTech
Chat/Flickr

• LinkedIn just released its report on the most recruited
  jobs of 2018, and the top job is a DevOps engineer.
• DevOps is a term combining “development” and
  “operations,” two vital roles on any software
  team. 
• Interest in DevOps has increased over the past few
  years, both for recruiters and investors.
• Engineers see DevOps more as a mindset than a job, but
  DevOps engineers still need strong skills in writing, testing,
  and delivering on a faster basis. 

Turns out the hottest job of 2018
could be that of a DevOps engineer.

LinkedIn just
released its report on the

most-recruited jobs


of 2018, showing that DevOps engineer was the most recruited
job, followed by e
nterprise account executives and frontend
engineers, in second and third place, respectively. 

This job is in high demand, and
the money shows it. According to Indeed, job postings for DevOps
engineers shot up


91 percent

between
2014 and 2017. And the average base salary cashes in at $125,714,
per the same data.

According to the LinkedIn report,
DevOps engineers are also the most recruited jobs specific to the
engineering field, followed by frontend engineers and cloud
architects.

So what does a DevOps engineer do, anyway?

The term “DevOps” is a
portmanteau of “Development” and “Operations,” two roles that are
vital to the field of software engineering. In short, the term
refers to tools and practices that help engineers deliver and fix
code on a more regular and faster basis, often multiple times a
day — a practice pioneered by Facebook and its
cohort. 

Before, developer teams would
build and test the code, while operations teams would deploy and
monitor the code. A DevOps engineer does both, and generally
carries the end-to-end responsibility of developing, testing,
deploying, monitoring and improving the code.

That said, the relatively flashy
new job title can be somewhat vague, and the responsibilities of
the role can differ across companies.

Indeed, Engineers argue that
“DevOps” is more of a culture and mindset, rather than a single
job. A DevOps engineer’s responsibilities can overlap with other
types of engineers, such as site reliability engineers. And like
other software engineers, DevOps engineers have to collaborate
with their team to write and restructure code.

At the same time, these engineers
have to have the right skills to back up this mindset. DevOps
engineers have to ensure that the software will work across
different platforms, as well as frequently test and deploy their
code.

To become a DevOps engineer, one
should be able to use open source technologies and automation
tools, as well as have strong skills in testing, coding and
scripting. People skills are also crucial, as the DevOps
philosophy requires more collaboration among, well, developers
and operations. 

Still, the very concept of DevOps
has become a hot commodity in Silicon Valley:  Investors are
putting massive amounts of cash into
DevOps startups that help their teams take advantage of this
mindset. In that light, it’s not surprising that
companies are hiring for DevOps talent, too. 

As for the rest of the top three: Frontend engineers build the
user interface of websites and apps, which is a crucial part of
any software team. Enterprise account executives manage business
relationships with a company’s large customers, which speaks to
the importance of the sales function.