Becoming a DevOps engineer
Maarten De Ceuster is a true IT enthusiast. He got a degree in car mechanics and worked in the car business for some time. But after a stint at the sales department of an electro company, he decided to change his career path. And although he didn’t have a formal IT degree at first, he became a DevOps engineer at BRYXX. How did he accomplish that?
Maarten’s journey
Maarten decided to follow his dream of being an IT specialist after he recovered from a severe illness. So, he studied at the Linux Professional Institute and became a certified systems administrator. A couple of months later, one of the competence managers of iAdvise Groep contacted him via LinkedIn. Together, they discussed the job opportunities at BRYXX. “These days, organizations recruit IT profiles through all kinds of channels”, says Maarten. “BRYXX, a middleware and DevOps specialist, offered to help me with an IT career based on technology and personal development. They were looking for independent, responsible and fun people who wanted to learn. I gladly accepted their help and look at me now! I am actually working as a junior DevOps engineer.”
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a culture that emphasizes the collaboration between IT and business professionals that are involved in the creation, development and employment of software. It’s a way of living, a mindset that allows IT and business departments to work better together. In addition, it helps IT resources free up time, which allows them to focus on tasks that improve the overall business results.
DevOps tasks
Currently, Maarten performs a wide range of tasks, from setting up test environments to creating system documentation and evaluating automation tools, often used to accelerate DevOps practices. At the moment, he is deep-diving into the HashiCorp ecosystem. These tools focus on cloud infrastructure automation by creating consistent workflows to provision, secure, connect and run any infrastructure for any application. Maarten’s objective is to understand how the tools work and examine how customers may benefit from them. The tools he evaluates include:
- Terraform to provision infrastructure
- Vault to secure applications and infrastructure
- Consul to connect applications across infrastructure
- Nomad to run applications on infrastructure
- Vagrant to build and manage virtual machine environments in a single workflow
Explore new things
The working environment at BRYXX is easily described: work hard, play hard. Maarten: “It may sound funny, but to me, going to work feels like going to a bar. I talk to a lot of people. They are all willing to help and we have a lot of fun together. I also appreciate my mentor’s coaching. He listens to me, stimulates me to discover my career path and points me in the right direction. Furthermore, the monthly Dungeon & Dragons evenings are a great way to meet new people and strengthen the teams. Last but not least, what I like most about BRYXX is the freedom we have to explore new things.”
Are you interested in becoming a DevOps engineer too? Check our vacancies!