DevOps is no longer purely a technical discipline — it is a business transformation strategy. Organizations that treat it as only a tooling or automation exercise consistently struggle to scale their initiatives. According to a survey of 1,260 IT managers conducted by the DevOps Institute, the most in-demand DevOps candidates today are hybrid specialists: professionals who combine process knowledge, automation expertise, functional IT understanding, and interpersonal skills.
Why Hybrid Skills Now Matter More Than Pure Automation
In earlier DevOps adoption cycles, automation skills dominated hiring requirements. That has shifted. The DevOps Institute survey found that process skills and process knowledge have overtaken automation skills as the primary competency organizations seek. This makes sense: once teams understand what automation tools can do, the harder challenge becomes defining the processes, governance, and cultural norms that determine how those tools are used effectively.
As the survey authors put it, early DevOps adopters focused on understanding the technology and its potential. The next logical step is establishing the processes and rules by which that technology is applied consistently and responsibly across the organization.
DevOps Hiring Is Genuinely Difficult
With approximately 52% of companies actively building DevOps competency through hiring, demand for qualified candidates is high — and supply is limited. Around 65% of respondents reported difficulty finding candidates with the right combination of skills. This is not simply a shortage of technically proficient engineers; it reflects the rarity of professionals who can bridge development, operations, automation, security, and business communication simultaneously.
More than half of all survey respondents described themselves as still in the early or mid stages of their DevOps journey. The reasons are both technical and organizational. DevOps requires dismantling deeply entrenched accountability silos, which can feel threatening to teams and individuals whose roles and authority are defined by those silos. Organizational transformation — not tool selection — is often the hardest part.
Common DevOps Team Topologies
The survey identified three team models most commonly in use:
- The DevOps team silo (or promotion model): A dedicated DevOps team acts as an intermediary between development and operations. This is the most widely adopted model, though it risks recreating the silos DevOps is meant to eliminate.
- The DevOps collaboration model: DevOps is treated as everyone’s responsibility across development and operations, with no separate dedicated team. This is the closest to the original DevOps vision.
- The DevOps toolkit model: A central DevOps team owns and manages shared tooling used by other teams. This is common in larger enterprises standardizing their CI/CD and observability stacks.
Each model has tradeoffs, and the right choice depends on organizational size, culture, and maturity level.
The DevOps Hybrid Specialist Profile
The survey paints a clear picture of what an ideal DevOps candidate looks like today: someone with a holistic understanding of developer concerns, operational realities, and automation capabilities. Human skills, process knowledge, functional IT expertise, and automation proficiency are treated as equally important rather than ranked in a fixed hierarchy.
DevOps hybrid specialists typically draw from a wide area of expertise — from cloud infrastructure and platform engineering, to frameworks like Agile and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), to cross-functional communication and business awareness.
Key Skills Sought in DevOps Roles
The following data is drawn from the DevOps Institute survey of 1,260 IT managers.
Most Important DevOps Hybrid Abilities
- Process competencies and process knowledge — 68%
- Automation skills — 67%
- Soft skills — 61%
- Functional knowledge (networking, storage, etc.) — 36%
- Specific automation tool expertise — 29%
- Business skills — 23%
Core DevOps Functional Skills
- Compute and operational knowledge — 52%
- Security practices — 52%
- IT infrastructure knowledge — 50%
- Application design and development — 45%
- Quality assurance knowledge — 32%
- Business continuity and disaster recovery awareness — 31%
- Testing knowledge — 31%
- Networking knowledge — 28%
Core DevOps Technical Skills
- CI/CD toolchain proficiency — 69%
- Cloud platform and cloud environment knowledge — 63%
- API knowledge — 41%
- Analytical and observability knowledge — 31%
- Multiple programming languages — 28%
- Experience with UI, web services, and middleware — 28%
What This Means for DevOps Teams and Hiring Managers
The takeaway is clear: organizations building DevOps capabilities cannot hire purely for tool knowledge. The engineers who drive lasting DevOps success understand why processes exist, can communicate across organizational boundaries, and are comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-changing environments. Soft skills — often undervalued in technical hiring — rank third overall in the survey, ahead of functional and business-specific knowledge.
For practitioners looking to advance in DevOps roles, broadening your skill set beyond any single toolchain or platform is increasingly important. Familiarity with SRE principles, Agile delivery frameworks, cloud-native architectures, and security practices will differentiate candidates in a competitive hiring market.
Survey data referenced in this article is attributed to the DevOps Institute. The original report was published prior to March 2020. Photo credit: Joe McKendrick.