AWS DevOps Engineers are one of the most sought-after cloud specialists today, earning up to $192,000 a year. Find out what DevOps Engineers do day-to-day, what AWS qualifications they need, and how you could cross–train and become an AWS DevOps Engineer, even if you don’t have any experience in Amazon Web Services (AWS).
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a widely used, agile, and cost-effective software development strategy. The ultimate goal of DevOps is to narrow the gap between developers and other IT specialists. Under this model, development and operations teams are merged into one, with DevOps Engineers working across the entire lifecycle of an application. They develop, test, and deploy the product while managing, evolving, and automating operations.
AWS DevOps Engineer salary expectations
With the cloud industry expected to grow by another $800 billion across all platforms over the next decade, and with AWS already controlling 32% of the total market share, the demand for certified AWS DevOps Engineers is high and will only continue to rise. These cloud specialists have some of the most enviable salaries in tech and generous cross-training opportunities.
Qualified junior AWS DevOps Engineers can make $140,000 per year in the US, rising to $155,000 after 4-8 years and $192,000 in a senior role (9+ years). Freelancers can charge up to $165 per hour.
In the UK, the annual salary for junior DevOps Engineers equates to £57,500, rising to £65,000 in a mid-senior role and £91,250 in a senior role. The average freelance rate can be as high as £750 per day.
The salary data is based on the latest Jefferson Frank Careers and Hiring Guide: AWS Edition. To find out more, download the guide.
AWS DevOps Engineer role overview
As you’d expect, DevOps Engineers need to have a broad understanding of engineering, operations, and coding. They’re also great communicators, working across various departments to create and develop cost-effective systems within a company. Their end goal is to increase productivity in the workplace, and their day-to-day duties can range from creating and implementing systems software, to analyzing data and improving existing practices.
They also have extensive amounts of experience in configuration, packaging, and orchestration necessary to software-define even more of the life cycle – creating a more valuable CI/CD practice.
What is CI/CD and why is it important?
If you’re considering a career as an AWS DevOps Engineer, you’re already one step ahead if you know the CI/CD framework. The term stands for Continuous Integration, Continuous Development, or Continuous Deployment. It’s a modern framework that allows DevOps Engineers to build and manage applications in a way that makes them more agile.
Traditionally, any new features or upgrades were either done on an ad-hoc basis or had long lead times before their release. What this means for a customer is that when an upgrade takes place, the application looks completely different from what they’re used to; they don’t know how to use it anymore and end up feeling frustrated and quitting on the application.
Instead, modern CI/CD methodology suggests that we should make frequent, small, reversible changes to our applications, and test those on a regular basis. This method avoids outages and downtime, and frustration for customers.
What do AWS DevOps Engineers do day-to-day?
A DevOps Engineer is expected to balance various aspects of a project. This includes programming and coding, as well as the way the project is deployed and maintained. DevOps Engineers would typically collaborate with software developers, system operators, and other IT specialists to manage code releases. So, they work with server administrators, storage guys, or database administrators to ensure that everything is in sync. They frequently cross and merge the boundaries that exist between Software Development, Testing, and Operations teams, while keeping existing networks in mind as they design, plan, and test cloud applications. Meanwhile, they come up with effective ways to automate and streamline the company’s operations and processes.
AWS DevOps Engineer key responsibilities:
- Analyzing the current technology utilized within the company and developing steps and processes to improve and expand upon this
- Using CI/CD concepts to focus on software-defined life cycles, highlighting tools that emphasize automation, ultimately adding to an agile development environment
- Working closely with engineering professionals within the company to maintain hardware and software that’s needed for projects to be completed efficiently
AWS DevOps Engineer training and certifications guide
While a Master’s degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering is preferred, if you don’t have a degree don’t let that put you off this career path. Only 51% of the latest Jefferson Frank Careers and Hiring Guide respondents considered a degree to be an important factor in increasing their earning potential. If you have an existing background in tech, you could soon be earning your first AWS-accredited certifications and working at a world-leading brand as an AWS DevOps Engineer with our fully funded two-year cross-training program.
And certifications are well worth the time and effort. 77% of DevOps Engineers surveyed believe that certifications help them stand out in the job market, with 54% already holding one or more AWS certifications and 33% having undergone recertification to maintain their AWS Certified Status. If you’re serious about a career as an AWS DevOps Engineer, then gaining the following Foundational, Intermediate, and Expert AWS certification is a must.
Foundation: AWS Cloud Practitioner
If you’re new to AWS, this accessible certification will help you get your foot in the door in the AWS industry. It will look great on your CV, showcasing your knowledge of foundational cloud functionality and AWS products. By taking the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification, you will gain a better understanding of the various types of services that AWS offers, how AWS can help organizations better manage their costs, the fundamentals of security in the cloud, and the principles behind building applications for cloud services, including methodology for best practice.
Intermediate: AWS Certified Developer Associate and AWS SysOps Administrator Associate
AWS DevOps Engineers need to have a broad skill-set and knowledge that covers developing, deploying, managing, and operating workloads on AWS, as well as an understanding of writing and implementing cloud–based applications. If you have some existing experience with this cloud platform, these two intermediate certifications—AWS Certified Developer Associate and AWS SysOps Administrator Associate—will help you gain knowledge in both areas.
Expert: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional
This is the most advanced AWS DevOps Engineer certification, designed for specialists with at least two years of experience in provisioning, operating, and managing AWS environments. This expert qualification will serve as a seal of approval of your ability to automate essential AWS infrastructure and application tasks, including testing and deployment.
What AWS Technologies do AWS DevOps Engineers use
day-to-day?
AWS DevOps Engineers typically work with different AWS technologies on a daily basis. So, if you’re considering this career path, getting acquainted with these services will give you a head start.
Essential AWS technologies
Developer Stack
AWS DevOps Engineers would be expected to have experience in using CodeBuild, CodeCommit, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline because these services allow you to build for the CI/CD methodology. Others include AWS Tools/SDKs, AWS X-Ray.
Deployment & Automation
AWS DevOps Engineers need to be keen to automate solutions on the client’s IT ecosystem, so CloudFormation is an essential skill for achieving this, as is Elastic Beanstalk for deploying applications. AWS OpsWorks will also come in handy, as it’s related to deploying applications orchestrated with Chef or Puppet software.
Serverless Solutions
The best DevOps Engineers have a passion for Serverless Solutions as these are far more cost-effective and allow businesses to become more agile, avoiding the overhead associated with server-based solutions. API Gateway and AWS Lambda are essential.
Compute
Knowledge and experience in using ELB, EC2, ECS, ECR.
Monitoring
CloudWatch and AWS Config are essential monitoring services for AWS DevOps Engineers to have under their belt.
'Nice-to-have' technologies
Since security is an integral part of the cloud, ideally, DevOps Engineers should also understand security from an Identity and Management (IAM) point of view, as well as having experience using security services, such as GuardDuty.
The Trusted Advisor tool is also a good one to have under your belt, as it will help you to analyze your environment and check if you’re following the best practices.
The non-sequel, non-relational database service DynamoDB is another ‘nice to have,’ as are the tools Cognito, Organizations, Amazon S3. and AWS SSM Agent.
Bonus technologies
If you have experience in building solutions that are serverless and working with Serverless Architectures, then all the more power to you – you’re really going to make your CV stand out from the crowd!
Some experience of Orchestration Services and Management Services, such as Kubernetes, Docker, Jenkins, and Terraform would give you extra brownie points with a client. It’s useful to remember that Terraform is a vendor-agnostic service, and its match on the AWS platform is Amazon Cloud Formation. While the Amazon Cloud Formation tool in itself is great, it’s restricted to the AWS ecosystem. If you bring Terraform to the table, you’ll be able to use the solution you’ve built on other cloud platforms as well.
Coding languages such as Java, C#, or Dot Net are also incredibly useful in this role, though you don’t have to be an expert in these.
Career progression routes for AWS DevOps Engineers
Though becoming a qualified AWS DevOps Engineer is enough of a challenge and will open a host of work opportunities for you, if you’ve got your eye on the big picture and are making long-term career plans, here are two typical career progression routes that you can take after becoming a qualified AWS DevOps Engineer.
1. DevOps Engineer > Senior DevOps/Site Reliability Engineer > Lead DevOps Engineer/Principal Engineer
2. DevOps Engineer > DevOps Architect > Solutions Architect
However, if you don’t have experience in AWS yet, the quickest route into the industry is Revolent’s AWS DevOps training program, which includes essential AWS-certified certifications and work placements with top tech brands.
After gaining your first three AWS certifications in your initial weeks of training at Revolent, you’ll carry on working across our client base on different projects, gaining essential industry experience, now as a fully qualified AWS DevOps Engineer.
