There’s no “standard” career path in IT and cybersecurity. Many top professionals come from diverse backgrounds, including music and the arts. If you have the drive and interest, you can succeed in IT regardless of your background.
A common path looks like this: IT Help Desk → Systems Administrator → Specialized Role
Taking a step into the world of Operations can be daunting. At present there are few professional degrees, and the ones that exist focus on specialized topics such as systems administration, network engineering or security.
However, the Operations landscape is significantly larger than that. This page aims to provide a detailed view on the careers you can move to as you enter the field.
Deciding a career path
Around the end of the 101 level of Ops School, you will want to start thinking about which career path you want to take. The paths tend to overlap in places, and both paths can lead to similar places down the road.
Imagine two roads that run straight, and occasionally get close or overlap, but generally head in the same direction.
Your two options are usually:
- Operations generalist
- Operations specialist
The one you choose, should be the one you feel most comfortable with. Over time, as your skills grow, both paths should lead to similar opportunities: team leadership, senior technical leadership, and management.
The way you travel each path is considerably different, and it isn’t uncommon to switch from one path to another once or twice.
Persons in generalized careers are often in high demand by employers. While the adage states “Jack of all trades, master of none”, an operations generalist is very much expected to be “Master of almost all trades.”
It’s quite common to see a good Operations Engineer who is well-versed in systems administration, database administration, storage engineering, network engineering, security engineering, and other topics.
Similarly, Operations managers are expected to know a wide variety of subjects at a reasonable enough level to make good technical decisions. Often, people who choose to become Operations managers begin their careers as either generalists, or specialists in one or more fields.
Generalist roles are often most highly prized in technical companies and startups, where it is beneficial to be able to work with multiple technologies and groups well.
Operations Engineer
Operations engineers are expected to be able to wear any of the following hats (and sometimes all of them, at the same time):
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Database administrator
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Systems administrator
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Network engineer
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Security engineer
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Architect
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Performance engineer
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Part-time software engineer
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Storage engineer
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High Performance Computing engineer
The role can be summed up appropriately as this: When somebody wants to know about any production system, no matter what it is, they will ask the Operations engineer. Your job as the Operations engineer, is to know the system well enough to be able to answer any question, or know how to find the answer quickly.
In the medical field, you would be a Doctor of Internal Medicine. In culinary, you would be an Iron Chef.
Operations Manager
Operations managers are similar in many ways to operations engineers. If you have read the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, then this is a leadership role, not a management role. An Operations manager works to bring their team and other teams closer together. A good reference on managing an operations team, is Michael Rembetsty’s PICC 2012 talk on DevOps Management. It covers moving from traditional Operations to DevOps, and then developing and growing an Operations team.