A good read, especially if DevOps career is just starting out. Many companies in not such bad situation have established way of doing things differing from those mentioned, but it’s still worthwhile to read and think about what you should look at.

I’m of the strong opinion that the title “DevOps Engineer” is an oxymoron. A contradiction in itself.

“DevOps Consultant” or “DevOps Coach”? Perfectly fine. But “DevOps Engineer” or “DevOps Developer”? Big nope. Same goes for a dedicated “DevOps Team”.

For me it hints towards a big misunderstanding of the ideas behind DevOps, as it tends to be more about cultural transformations in the way teams cooperate. Having a “DevOps Engineer” or a “DevOps Team” indicates that DevOps is the responsibility of a single person or team, which exactly goes counter to a lot of the ideas behind DevOps.

The following article perfectly captures the essence on why I think “DevOps Engineer” is such a bad title:

I’ve read that before and it’s a good read too! Though I have few thoughts based on my own experience. Semantically I’d argue the DevOps interface mentioned in the article needs “engineering” in the organisation before developers can use it. It also needs maintaining, updating and planning. I guess “Consultant” or “Coach” would tick that box too, but I think it would give slightly wrong undertone about the level of involvement in the development of the processes used. So, I’d argue that DevOps Engineering can be, if not job title, at least job description.

As a side note, my own job title is not “DevOps” anything. The team I work in is not “DevOps”, it’s actually “infrastructure”. But when people ask what I do, I say “DevOps stuff”. So at least colloquially the meaning is clear to people in the industry.