I’m a DevOps engineer. My job is to bridge the gap between software development and IT operations and streamline the software development lifecycle.
Starting…
I really enjoy joining or starting new projects. It’s an opportunity to apply DevOps tools and practices to make the software development life cycle (SDLC) as efficient and reliable as possible. What I find interesting is how the role combines technical and non-technical aspects.
On the technical side, I focus on setting up CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous deployment) pipelines to automate building, testing, and deploying code. Equally important, the collaborative side focuses on championing DevOps principles through discussions and coaching within the team.
Examples of this include promoting the benefits of incremental release cycles and a “shift-left” mindset. I find it extremely rewarding to see how these improvements can positively impact a delivery project.
With the end in mind
The demand for hands-on DevOps work can naturally decrease as a project matures. Once CI/CD pipelines are stable and infrastructure is fully configured, the day-to-day involvement often shifts from building to maintaining. I see this as a sign of success, as part of being an effective DevOps engineer is enabling the development team to operate independently.
Empowering developers to confidently deploy their code without the need to fully understand the underlying infrastructure is key to achieving a fast, reliable release cycle.
This can be bittersweet. Stepping back or moving on from a team you’ve helped grow is always a little sad, but it’s also a reminder that the systems and practices you’ve put in place are working as intended.
DevOps never stops!
Like every area in tech, DevOps is constantly evolving with new tools, techniques, and best practices. It might be a new feature from a cloud provider that streamlines deployments, or an innovative approach to running CI/CD pipelines. To stay up to date, I regularly read blog posts and news articles and subscribe to services like TLDR.
I’ve always learned best by doing, so when I come across something promising, I set up a small lab environment to experiment with it hands-on. This helps me understand how it works and evaluate whether it’s worth integrating into real projects.
The DevOps huddle
Triad offers a great support network. Everyone is there for you, extremely approachable, and happy to help. That’s emphasised through a fortnightly DevOps huddle, where the DevOps team meets to discuss what we are working on, share advice, and discuss new or upcoming tools and technologies. This regular collaboration makes it easy to seek guidance, learn from others, and stay connected across projects.
If you’re starting as a DevOps engineer
If DevOps is a career goal, my advice would be to set clear developmental targets for learning new things. When I first moved into DevOps, there were so many tools, techniques, and practices that I was excited to learn and use.
A better approach would have been to focus on learning one or two things at a time. This would have helped me build deeper expertise and confidence more quickly. It’s easy to get overwhelmed trying to learn everything at once when you have tools like Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring stacks, and cloud platforms, all of which have interesting capabilities.
I’d recommend picking a core area, such as a CI/CD pipeline tool, and gaining a good understanding before starting with a new tool. Becoming confident with a pipeline tool (for example, GitHub Actions) creates a strong foundation. It’s the glue that connects many other tools and processes. Once you’re comfortable with it, you’ll find it much easier to integrate and experiment with tools like Terraform.
If you have a question for Callum or the Triad team, please get in touch.
