As a DevOps engineer, your job is to essentially close the gaps between software development, testing, and support. On a day-to-day basis you’ll be monitoring, optimizing, and sometimes managing the whos, whats, wheres, and hows of an IT project.
It’s not an easy career field. But it’s a job that pays excellently and has a high career outlook; Studies estimate a 22% job growth.
To prepare your DevOps resume for the next interview, it’ll require skills with various software programs and working with other software engineering departments to drive efficiencies. Today, we’ll be showing you examples of what a winning DevOps resume looks like. Use our suggestions to help you tailor your DevOps resume to match the job you’re aiming for.
Jump to a template:
When applying for a DevOps engineer job, your resume needs to demonstrate your ability to unify, automate, and manage software processes. This means you will have worked with different software programs to get a job done. In your resume, include your experience with these programs, along with any achievements that occurred as a result.
The skill section in this sample lists quite a few important skills that a DevOps engineer should have. But it also explains how these skills were used in their experience section. In your resume, list key relevant skills with software like Python, MySQL, or software automation, and talk about how using them brought positive results to the company.
Recruiters don’t just want to see your capabilities with certain software. They especially want to see how effective you are at using them. This sample lists how the use of various software resulted in things like “a 45% efficiency increase.” Include metrics of how much you reduced costs or labor and increased productivity or profit in your experience section.
Within a development team, there are developers and the operations team. Both parties have different goals; developers want to improve the software by releasing new features, whereas the operations team wants to keep the system stable and reliable. DevOps engineers are responsible for implementing tools, values, and policies to integrate both goals.
That’s why your resume should demonstrate you have a holistic view of the development process. To do this, you can include both programming and IT experience or skills.
Another way to demonstrate your holistic background in the development process is by illustrating your progressive growth in this field. You can start with entry-level positions in either the engineering or the operations team, and escalate from there with promotions or roles where you had more responsibilities.
DevOps is actually a successor of the Agile approach. It is a combination of values that thrive for continuous improvement, automation, collaboration, and transparency. As a DevOps engineer, you should be familiar with Agile principles that help you improve efficiency and transparency in the software development process. To demonstrate this on your resume, you can talk about previous projects in your work experience section in which you implemented automation to reduce redundant tasks. You can also mention achievements such as increased collaboration or efficiency in task deliverables.
Being a DevOps manager means that you will have done more than work with development/IT teams to test and improve quality and efficiency of programs. You will have led a team that has done the same thing. To get a managerial role in DevOps, show in your resume experience that you know how to effectively lead a team to deliver positive results for a company.
The resume in this sample describes the experience in leadership-related positions. This will catch a recruiter’s attention as they see capabilities to manage others. In your resume, explain your leadership roles, pointing out how large of a team you worked with and what was achieved.
Recruiters don’t just want to see your capabilities with certain software. They especially want to see how effective you are at using them. This sample lists how the use of various software resulted in things like “a 45% efficiency increase.” Include metrics of how much you reduced costs or labor and increased productivity or profit in your experience section.
The responsibility of this role is to ensure proper management, automation, maintenance, performance, and scalability of AWS cloud-based production systems. Recruiters want to see that you have the programming skills to help increase efficiency or reduce costs or labor. In the experience section of this sample, you see many bullet points explaining how certain operational functions were improved. For example, “eliminating 85% of manual work”, “reduced the service loading time by 97%”, or “increased the page speed by 15%.” Your resume should include the achievements you’ve reached by using AWS.
Because AWS DevOps is a more senior role, recruiters want to see job growth and leadership. Make sure you list any changes or promotions in your job titles, along with detailing leadership experience. For example, this sample mentions leading “a team of 4 DevOps engineers in the transition from GCP to AWS.”
Your resume needs to have strong action verbs relevant to the role so recruiters can see how you specifically contributed to an accomplishment. In the sample, you see verbs like “automated”, “managed”, and “implemented”. For an AWS DevOps resume, include action verbs like these when explaining your experience.
An AWS DevOps engineer improves software development operations by becoming a bridge between the IT and development teams. Their role is to create CI/CD pipelines for process automation. This DevOps, in particular, focuses on AWS infrastructure, so it’s important to demonstrate your specialty on your resume. You can also include an AWS Certified DevOps Engineer certification to prove your knowledge and expertise in Amazon Web Services.
Your AWS DevOp engineering resume should demonstrate your expertise in quality assurance. It is your responsibility as a DevOps engineer to ensure product compilation without errors. Additionally, you must ensure that applications are secure and accessible before the product release.
An AWS DevOps engineer is responsible for ensuring the continuous improvement, scalability, and security of the cloud-based production system. They deliver systems and tools to automate processes, typically on AWS - or Amazon Web Services — environments. They should have a strong understanding of programming and IT operations to ensure the constant availability of the system. It is important to focus your work experience section on outcomes. You can include quantifiable achievements to demonstrate your impact on previous projects’ bottom lines.
If you want to get noticed and that your resume passes ATS filters, it’s important to include keywords relevant to cloud engineering. Keywords like AWS (duh!), DevOps, Azure, or similar frameworks or technologies are worth including. This will help you be more relevant in the recruitment process and increase your chances of getting an interview.
DevOps engineers should have relevant soft skills like communication and collaboration, because they're likely working with different teams. However, you can demonstrate those through accomplishments and outcomes. When it comes to the skills section, it’s better to focus on technical skills.
To succeed as a Kubernetes DevOps engineer, you’ll need to get used to working with the cloud. This sample explains how they have implemented different cloud-based services in their experience. Recruiters want to see that you’re well-versed with the software. Your experience should highlight how you’ve used cloud services successfully on the job.
Your resume will catch the attention of recruiters if it has skills that you’ll use on the job. This sample has skills like Linux and AWS, then explains how those were used to automate data. Talk about the skills you have that are necessary for this role in your resume.
To get your resume past ATS, you need to list keywords that are relevant to this position. This sample uses keywords like “Kubernetes” and “automated,” which are both necessary for the role. When making your resume, read through the job description to find other keywords you can use.
A Kubernetes engineer is responsible for promoting the implementation of DevOps principles in a software development team.
As the name suggests, Kubernetes engineers specialize in cloud-based Kubernetes environments. So, your resume should include relevant Kubernetes keywords to get past resume screeners.
A Kubernetes certification validates that you can design, maintain, and configure cloud-based applications. On the other hand, it might be a good idea to also include a DevOps certification if you have one because it demonstrates that you can promote the DevOps mindset and systems within a development team.
This is a highly skilled professional who merges the I.T. development and operations tasks. Your responsibilities will include system administration, application coding, infrastructure provisioning, and release engineering, among others. This particular position will see you doing the above tasks within the Microsoft Azure ecosystem. A strong I.T. engineering background and a large range of skills in the field are expected of all applicants. Take a look at this successful applicant’s resume
This will be the first thing recruiters will be looking for so mention your experience with Azure in the introduction section. If you have gotten Azure certification mention that in the introduction section as well as the skills section.
Your job exists to increase efficiency in development and operations. Show this by including impressive metrics that show where you reduced release time, reduced bugs and bug fixing time, or improved other efficiencies.
This professional brings the software development and the I.T. operations teams together. As a senior DevOps engineer, you not only need to be highly skilled in this field, but you also need to be an effective leader and manager as you will most likely have a team you are in charge of. You also need to have strong communication skills are you will be communicating with teams across different silos of the company.
Your skills section should show the hard skills you have in the field. Use your skills section to include software programs and languages that you are experienced with, as well as development and operations functions that you can complete.
This is not an entry-level position, and as such recruiters will want to see a progression in your career up to this point. Showing promotions in your career indicates to recruiters that you are an exemplary employee and have had a successful career.
A DevOps engineer works to guide the development, engineering, and implementation of software and code updates. A DevOps engineer works across several departments to ensure all team members understand the software updates and there are no interdepartmental silos. A docker is a common PAAS software (Platform as a Service) that packages the software and all of its dependencies into a ‘container’ that makes it simple for DevOps engineers to tweak, run, and deploy their application in any environment.
A DevOps engineer/docker is a highly specialized professional with several years of software development experience. When filling this role, hiring managers will be looking for someone with a degree in computer science, and several years of progressive software development experience. They will also want a candidate who is versed and certified in DevOps.
Software engineering is not inherently DevOps engineering. DevOps is a specialized skill set that allows engineers to effectively manage software updates and re-engineering across all departments. Since DevOps requires a specialized skill set, it’s important for aspiring DevOps engineers to build on their software engineering knowledge and obtain a DevOps certificate. The AWS-certified DevOps engineer credential is a good way to show hiring managers your specialized knowledge.
An ideal candidate for the role will have several years of experience in software engineering. They should be comfortable with concepts such as cloud technology, software container concepts, deployment automation and deployment, and more. Showcasing your skills learned in prior software engineering roles is integral to landing a DevOps engineer role. If you can show previous leadership and project management experience, that will further enhance your resume for the role.
The elastic search DevOps engineer uses the ‘elastic stack’ to optimize operations and efficiency. Elasticsearch is an open source search and analytics engine. This tech stack has many uses for companies, including retrieving real time data about users, application search, security analytics, and business analytics. The elasticsearch DevOps engineer oversees the tech stack and ensures employees are using this tech to its fullest potential.
When hiring for this role, recruiters will be looking for someone with a degree in computer science or electronics engineering, and several years of experience as a software engineer and/or DevOps engineer. Prior experience as a DevOps engineer is attractive for this role as DevOps engineers often understand the basic concepts of elasticsearch.
A Kubernetes engineer is primarily responsible for the development and design of distributed systems. They fix bugs in upstream Kubernetes, written in Go, a programming language. The Kubernetes engineer must also be able to design and deploy containment systems, too. The Kubernetes engineer works closely to help manage and support operational functions like DevOps.
When hiring for this role, hiring managers will be looking for someone with a degree in computer science. They will also be looking for a candidate with several years of software engineering and coding experience. The ideal candidate would have experience with certain programs such as Go, OpenShift, and Rancher.
The role of the Kubernetes engineer is very specialized, and therefore credentials outside of previous software development experience will help you land the role more easily. You can take a course to become a certified Kubernetes administrator. This shows hiring managers you have specialized knowledge in managing and operating Kubernetes engineering functions.
Since Kubernetes is written in Go, showcasing experience writing code in Go is wise if you’re trying to land a role in Kubernetes engineering. Proficiencies in other languages, such as Python, are also great to mention on your resume to build credibility as an experienced software developer and engineer. Showing you are able to write code, particularly using the Go language, is sure to catch the eye of a hiring manager.
Since the DevOps role involves much work with various software programs, experience and skills with tools that help to manage those programs are key. Include those skills and how you’ve used them throughout your resume.
If you’re uncertain of which skills to include, the job description should help you out. It’ll tell you which skills the hiring company is looking for in an applicant. Try listing some of them; it’ll help you get past ATS. However, stick to using primarily hard skills. Soft skills are important to have, especially for upper-level roles, but technical skills should be what you focus more attention on.
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on DevOps job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
Experience in data management, automation, and program quality testing are all critical skills needed for DevOps — after all, DevOps is short for Developer Operations, so anything that helps with improving the efficiency of developers is what you want. If your resume can display your success with many different programming tools and other departments’ data to drive efficiency, you’ll be one step closer to obtaining your next DevOps job.
Below are some tips to help you structure your perfect DevOps resume.
DevOps engineers need to do a lot of building, configuring, and testing programs. Doing so requires skill and experience with tools like OpenVZ/KVM, Hadoop, and the cloud. Therefore, it’s necessary to use action verbs that highlight your abilities with these tools.
Just make sure the verbs --and the following experience-- are related to DevOps. Other software engineer-related jobs use the same or complementary tools. So whichever ones you choose to use in your resume need to be useful for this exact role. However, if those action verbs from other roles happen to be connected to this one, use them in your resume.
For more related action verbs, visit Software Engineering Action Verbs.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
If you're a senior-level employee, or you're changing careers to become a DevOps, it's useful to add a paragraph at the top of your resume highlighting your most impressive accomplishments. This is called a resume summary.
Here's an example of a summary that can be used on a DevOps resume.
A resume summary is a totally optional section, and in most cases, it's better to leave it out of your resume than include it. For example, if you're a student or mid-level hire, you should not include a summary, and instead use the space to add to your work experience.
To learn how to write an effective resume summary for your DevOps resume, or figure out if you need one, please read Resume Summary Examples for Job Seekers: When To Include One.
You should use bullet points to describe your achievements in your DevOps resume. Here are sample bullet points to help you get started:
Developed and implemented heavily parallelized algorithms to resize and watermark 5MM+ images of different sizes using Amazon EC2
Designed and implemented 50+ E2E tests using Selenium & Protractor, simulating each user group's actions
Cut projected time for data analysis by one week by developing reusable ETL components using Pentaho Kettle
Designed and implemented an automated system for processing employee timesheets, eliminating the need for manual handwritten timesheets and resulted in a 10/hr per week time saving
Led full redesign of website with findings from customer segmentation and competitive research, increasing website leads by 200%
For more sample bullet points and details on how to write effective bullet points, see our articles on resume bullet points, how to quantify your resume and resume accomplishments.
