DevOps engineering and full-stack development – 2 sides of the same agile coin

Two of the most talked-about and on-trend roles in tech dominated our Skill Up survey – DevOps engineers and Full-Stack developers. Even before we started exploring our data, we knew that both would feature heavily. Given the amount of time spent online arguing about DevOps and the merits and drawbacks of full-stack development, it’s interesting to see exactly what it means to be a DevOps engineer or full-stack developer. From salary to tool use, both our Web Development and SysAdmin and Security Salary and Skills Reports offer an insight into the professional lives of people actually performing these roles every day.

The similarities between DevOps engineering and full-stack development

The similarities between the two roles are striking. Both DevOps engineering and full-stack development are having a considerable impact on the way in which technology is used and understood within organizations and businesses – which makes them particularly valuable. In SMEs, for example, DevOps engineers command almost the same amount of money as in Enterprise. Considering the current economic climate, it’s a clear signal of the value of DevOps practices in environments where flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing demands and expectations are crucial to growth.

Full-stack developers also command the highest salaries in many industries. In consultancy, for example, full-stack developers earn significantly more than any other web development role. While this could suggest that organizations aren’t yet willing to invest in (or simply don’t need) in-house full-stack developers, it highlights that they are nevertheless willing to spend money on individuals with full-stack knowledge, who are capable of delivering cutting-edge insight. However, just as we saw Cloud consultancies dominate the tech consultancy market a few years ago, over time it’s likely that full-stack development will become more and more established as a standard.

DevOps engineers and full-stack developers share the same philosophical germ. They are symptoms of a growing business demand for greater agility and flexibility, and hint at a trend towards greater generalization in the skillset of technical professionals.

part of the thrill of #devops to me is how there's no true agreement about what it is. it's like watching LOST all over again

— jon devops hendren (@devops) May 18, 2015

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Full-stack developers are using DevOps tools

I’ve always seen them as manifestations of similar ideas in different technical areas. However, when you look at the data we’ve collected in our survey, alongside some wider research, the relationship between the DevOps engineer and the Full-Stack developer might possibly be more than purely conceptual. ‘Full-Stack’ and ‘DevOps’ are both terms that blur the lines between developer and engineer, and both are two sides of an intriguing form of cross-pollination; technologies more commonly used for deployment and automation. Docker and Vagrant were the most notable, highlighting the impact of containerization and virtualization on web development, but we also found a number of references to the Microsoft automation tool PowerShell – a distinctly DevOps-esque tool if ever there was one.

Perhaps there’s a danger of overstating my point – surely we shouldn’t be surprised if web developers are using these tools – it’s not that strange, right? Maybe, but the fact that tools such as these are being used by web developers in their day-to-day work suggests that they are no longer simply expected to develop: they also need to deploy and configure their projects. Indeed, it’s worth noting that across all our web development respondents, a large number plan on learning Docker over the next 12 months.

DevOps engineers use a huge range of tools

DevOps Engineers were even more eclectic in their tool-usage than full-stack developers. Python is the language of-choice and Puppet the go-to configuration management tool, but web tools such as JavaScript and PHP are also being used. References to Flask, for example, the Python microframework, emphasise the way in which DevOps Engineers have an eye on web development while they’re automating your infrastructure.

Taken alone, these responses might not fully evidence the relationship between DevOps engineers and Full-Stack developers. However, there are jobs out there asking for a combination of both skillsets. One, posted by a recruiter working for a nameless ‘creative media house’ in London, was looking for someone to become ‘a key member of multi-party cloud research projects, helping to bring a microservices-based video automation system to life, integrate development and developed systems into onside and global infrastructure’. The tools being asked for were very varied indeed. From a high-level language, such as JavaScript, to scripting languages such as Bash, Python and Perl, to continuous integration tools, configuration management tools and containerization technologies, whoever eventually gets the job certainly deserves to be called a polyglot.

Blurring the line between full-stack and DevOps

A further indication of the blurred line between engineers and developers can be found in this article from computing.co.uk. It’s an interesting tale of how working practices develop according to necessity and how methodologies and ideas interact with the practical details of a given situation. It tells the story of how the Washington Post went about building its submission platform, and how the way in which the project was resourced and managed changed according to certain pressures – internal and external. The title might actually be misleading – if you read it, it’s not so much that DevOps necessitates full-stack development, more that each thing grows out of the next. It might even be said that the reverse is true – that full-stack development necessitates DevOps thinking.

The relationship between DevOps and full-stack development gives a real indication of the state of the tech world in 2015. Within a tech landscape of increasing complexity and cross-pollination there are going to be opportunities for developers and engineers to significantly drive their value as technical professionals. It’s simply a question of learning more, and of being open to new challenges and ideas about how to work effectively. It probably won’t be easy, but it might just be a fun journey.