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Daniel Rankov, Telerik Academy Upskill: DevOps is a collaboration towards a shared goal

DevOps has become an increasingly popular topic. Today, DevOps culture and practices are broadly adopted across industries in almost every business vertical - including governments and enterprises to start-up companies.

And for a good reason!

"Companies that incorporate DevOps practices "build, release and operate the software with higher quality, enabling them to innovate faster, to lower the time to market, to achieve overall higher system uptime, correlating to customer engagement and satisfaction," explained Daniel Rankov during our interview. He's a CEO and Chief Cloud Officer at Several Clouds, AWS Community Hero, and the lead trainer of the Telerik Academy Upskill DevOps program.



As a result, there is a high demand for well-prepared DevOps experts.

According to a report from CodingGames, the demand for DevOps experts is rising, and six of the ten currently trending technologies are related to DevOps.

"When we surveyed global HR professionals at the end of 2020, almost half admitted that DevOps would be the hardest position to fill in 2021 due to exceptionally high demand. This trend shows no sign of slowing in the near future, with a global switch to remote working driving demand," shared Aude Barral, co-founder of CodinGame.

We saw the same trend through our constant communication with the business, listening to all companies part of this ecosystem, and we knew that the IT sector needs DevOps experts.

That's how we created the most in-depth Upskill DevOps program in Bulgaria was created.

We validated the curriculum with leading IT companies (Americaneagle.com, AtScale, Experian, DataArt, Melon, OfficeRnD, ST6, and many more). During the 3-month training, you'll master the skills that the industry needs from leading experts headed by Daniel Rankov.

Meet Daniel Rankov, Lead Trainer of Telerik Academy Upskill DevOps

Daniel is builds and leads Several Clouds to become a premier Cloud and DevOps consulting company. Before that, he led the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) team and guided the overall Cloud and DevOps strategy at MentorMate. Daniel is in a player-coach role and has multiple certifications on AWS, including Solution Architect and DevOps professional levels and Security and Networking specialties. He is also the co-organizer of the AWS Bulgaria User Group, and in 2021, was recognized as the first AWS Community Hero in Bulgaria. 

Before he decided to pursue a DevOps career, Daniel had an operations background - "I started my career as a Linux system administrator and then grew to lead the team in one of the fastest-growing companies in Bulgaria," shared Daniel.

Outside work, he likes to keep himself busy by doing new and exciting things every day, and "lately my kids fulfil that need," he added with a smile.

Now that you know Daniel, time for a deep dive into the world of DevOps and what it's like to be part of it!

What does it mean to be an AWS Community Hero?

The AWS Heroes program recognizes a vibrant, worldwide group of AWS experts whose enthusiasm for knowledge-sharing has a real impact within the community. Heroes go above and beyond to share knowledge. It's a great community, and I'm honoured to be part of it.

What is your definition of DevOps?

I like simple things, so mine is "Collaboration towards a shared goal."

What is the role of the DevOps engineer?

Nowadays, the most common understanding of the DevOps engineer role is in Automation, Pipelines, CI/CD, and Cloud. Yet that considerably varies depending on the company's maturity and needs.

Besides technical ability and hard work, what personal attributes a DevOps engineer must have?

To become a master, one should develop Systems thinking - the ability to think holistically. Also, a strong desire to learn daily is a must because a lot is going on in the domain, and one should keep himself updated.

 

If you could advise a young person starting, what would you say?

I have a few. Be persistent. It should not always be challenging, but sometimes it's not easy – keep going.
Invest in yourself. Buy the books, courses and make time to study. Build connections. Participate in local communities, User Groups, meet like-minded people. Learn how to work in a team and build emotional intelligence.

What do you do to be your most productive self? We are sure you have a million things going on every day!

I practice the Getting Things Done (GTD) system, which has a tremendous impact, and I recommend it to every busy person. Another thing is that I try not to multitask and to lower the context switching as much as possible.

Is there a book that every future DevOps engineer should read?

Oh yeah. I recommend starting with this list - especially for an engineering position. I recommend "The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and Sre Practices for Web Services, Volume 2" by Thomas A. Limoncelli.

Can you recommend three experts that every DevOps engineer should follow online?

Here are some of the most interesting and smart people I follow - Patrick Debois, Jez Humble, and Dave Farley.

Why is Telerik Academy Upskill DevOps an excellent way for professionals with relevant experience to augment their skills?

The course is structured to provide a broad perspective on the DevOps engineering position. We will focus on the top trending toolchain to understand "How we practice?" DevOps. We also focus on "Why do we do the things that we do?" building the systems thinking and the holistic approach to better software development, delivery, and operations.

Thank you, Daniel!

Take your career to the next level with Telerik Academy Upskill DevOps. You still have time to apply by September 17.

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