In the rapidly evolving field of IT, new roles, titles, and frameworks often emerge, leading to varying terminology across organizations. One such role is the automation developer.
Despite what the title might suggest, an automation developer is not a traditional software developer. In fact, most automation developers (or automation engineers or platform engineers) don’t have extensive development skills or backgrounds in coding, yet they are creating Ansible content every day and are contributing to the successful adoption of automation within their organization.
Traditional developers vs. the automation developers
When we think of a traditional software developer, we imagine someone who writes code to build applications. Their work involves designing, coding, testing, and maintaining software. In contrast, an automation developer focuses on using automation tools like Ansible to streamline and enhance operational IT tasks. The job titles I see most often at Red Hat are:
- IT operations manager
- Network or cloud engineer
- Systems administrator
- Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
But regardless of job title, these individuals take a similar approach to performing their jobs by applying their expertise in a given area to automate repetitive tasks. They possess a deep understanding of system and/or network management and are proficient in using automation tools like Ansible. They've learned how to translate operational tasks into Ansible content that will automate processes and improve efficiency, consistency and reliability for their organization.
As with traditional developers, automation developers greatly benefit from the platforms and tools to help them be as accurate and productive as possible. Generative AI technologies like Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed can help new automation developers learn to write Ansible content by providing context for model recommendations while helping more experienced developers create Ansible Playbooks in less time.
Examples of automation development
The primary responsibility of an automation developer is to automate routine tasks. With Ansible Automation Platform, they can create playbooks and roles that automate processes such as:
- System updates: Checking all machines are running the latest security patches and software versions.
- Software deployments: Automating the deployment of applications across different environments for consistency and reducing deployment times.
- Configuration management: Managing configurations for servers, networks and applications so they adhere to desired states.
- Infrastructure provisioning: Automating the provisioning of virtual machines, cloud instances and containers to streamline infrastructure management.
In particular, their work helps scale automation consistently across the enterprise, saving time, reducing manual errors and aligning teams. This is the inflection point when automation becomes mission-critical to the organization and they begin to see significant ROI and increased cost savings from their automation investment.
Scaling automation with Ansible Automation Platform
Once you’ve started writing automation with Ansible, the next step is to scale and manage it effectively across your organization. This is where Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comes into play. Ansible Automation Platform provides a comprehensive suite of tools designed to help organizations scale their automation efforts and address enterprise-level needs. Key features include:
- Centralized automation management: Manage all your automation activities from a single, centralized platform.
- Scalability: Easily scale automation across your entire IT environment, from on-premises to cloud.
- Enterprise integration: Integrate with existing enterprise tools and workflows, enhancing your overall IT ecosystem.
- Collaboration and governance: Foster collaboration across teams with role-based access controls and audit trails.
By leveraging Ansible Automation Platform, organizations can accelerate their digital transformation efforts, reduce complexity and keep up with the challenges of managing their modern IT environments. Individuals are empowered to become champions within their organizations, and can work collaboratively across teams to standardize and scale automation.
Becoming an automation developer
The first step may be obvious, yet it it's important: embrace the fact that in modern IT organizations, operational roles are increasingly taking on developer-oriented approaches such as infrastructure-as-code and configuration-as-code. Ultimately, learning to create, test and promote Ansible content and sharing it with others through an automation community of practice (COP) makes your skills more valuable to your organization.
The good news is that you don't need to write extensive application code to start automating with Ansible Automation Platform. The transition is more about expanding your current skills rather than learning entirely new ones. You can start by becoming familiar with Ansible and YAML—the language used for the creation of Ansible Playbooks and roles which serve as the instructions for your automation.
There are also many online resources for Ansible Automation Platform and automation development. Red Hat learning paths, Ansible documentation, labs/tutorials, and community forums can help you get started. It's also helpful to learn about Visual Studio Code, which is a popular integrated development environment (IDE) preferred by many automation developers.
Once you're more comfortable writing Ansible code, you can leverage Ansible Automation Platform to scale and manage these automations across your entire organization. Remember, your operational knowledge is your greatest asset in automation development.
Summary
An automation developer using Ansible Automation Platform is a role tailored for those who understand the intricacies of IT operations and want to leverage automation to enhance efficiency. It’s not about becoming a traditional software developer; it’s about using Ansible Automation Platform to make processes smoother and more reliable and then scaling them.
If you’re a systems administrator or an SRE, you already have the foundational skills to excel as an automation developer. You can embrace the opportunity to build on that expertise and help drive your organization towards more advanced automation use cases and with Ansible Automation Platform, becoming a champion of digital transformation within your organization.
Additional resources
- Learning path: Get started with the Ansible VS Code extension
- Self-paced lab: Create your first Ansible Playbook
- Learning path: Understand the essentials of YAML
