Everywhere you look, companies are hiring "DevOps Engineers", "System Engineers", "System Administrators", or a whole slew of other job titles that are a mix and match of buzzwords.
On this page I'll do my best to define what the aforementioned roles *should* encompass and an idea of what where to start if you are looking to pursue a career in this field.
To put it simply, the role of a SysAdmin is to manage the systems and those who use them.
You will frequently also see this role advertised as IT Admin, IT Helpdesk, Server Admin, Information Technologies Specialist.
To pursue a career as a SysAdmin you will want to have a firm understanding of Windows server and desktop administration, patience, the ability to think logically through a problem separating correlation from causation, patience, the ability to gather information based on context clues, and last but certainly not least patience.
To help you get started, I'd recommend the following certs and training:
Responsibilities:
Monitoring Systems Health Status
OS Installation, Upgrades, & Security Patching
Third Party Application Installation and Support
End-user Support and Troubleshooting
Enforce Security Best Practices
Writing and Maintaining Documentation
Salary range for SysAdmins usually runs between $50k-$80k in the DMV area: PayScale SysAdmin Salary
Systems Engineers are responsible for the design and implementation of the infrastructure and tooling stacks. Engineers must have a understanding of the architecture and design of the infrastructure in place and how the tools are configured and interact with one another.
To help you get started, I'd recommend pursing the Systems Administrator certification paths listed above plus the following:
Salary range for Junior Systems Engineers average around $100k while Senior Engineers average $140k in the DMV area: GlassDoor Systems Engineer Salary
DevOps Engineers need to cover everything a Systems Engineer would be expected to know, but the real power of DevOps comes from a focus shift to culture instead of just the tools. I highly recommend reading Atlassian's "What is DevOps" article to understand why.
Responsibilities include (but are not limited to):
Collaborative management skills
Communication and collaboration
Configuration management
Containers and container orchestration
Continuous integration and continuous deployment
Experience with DevOps tools
Familiarity with coding and scripting
System administration
System architecture and provisioning
Tools you should be familiar with (in alphabetical order/not necessarily by order of importance):
Code Management
Apache Subversion (SVN)
Git
Continuous Integration
Bamboo
GitLab CI
Jenkins
TravisCI
Containerization
Docker
Kubernetes
IT Orchestration and Configuration Management Tools
Ansible
Chef
Puppet
Salt
Monitoring
Nagios
Splunk
Handy Certificates depending on your area of focus:
It's also important to understand what Agile Methodologies are:
Salary range for DevOps Engineers averages between $130k-$170k in the DMV area: GlassDoor DevOps Salary