A day in the life of Azure DevOps Engineer Marnik
27.04Hi there! My name is Marnik Van Hileghem, and I’m an Azure DevOps Engineer. I’m just one of many DevOps Consultants and Engineers at CloudFuel, and I really like how each of us gets to carve out their own niche. They also consider our preferences when deciding what projects we will work on, which is great.
The meaning of the job title DevOps Engineer can vary from one company to another, so it’s nice to see this variety not only reflected but encouraged. For example, my colleague Vincent focuses more on the migration and tooling aspect of DevOps, while I prefer setting up DevOps pipelines using tools like Azure DevOps & GitHub to automatically build, test and deploy (dockerised) applications. I like digging into the code: I used to be a system engineer, but I’ve always been fond of developing. I’m also using my infrastructure skills to help companies transition from on-premises systems to Azure, and sometimes I even take up the role of Cloud-Native Architect.
My professional preferences and career path are also reflected in my choice of certificates. CloudFuel is part of The Cronos Group, and our partnership with Microsoft lets us enrol for certifications through the Enterprise Skills Initiative platform. I managed to obtain the following Microsoft Certified certificates in the past two years: Azure Administrator Associate, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, and DevOps Engineer Expert. That’s not all, though: besides extending my existing certifications, I plan to get the Cybersecurity Architect Expert certificate this year as well.
Another thing that I like about working at CloudFuel is the level of attention to research and development. We also get to spend a certain amount of our time on R&D on a yearly basis. For example, I’m currently looking into how we can offer Azure’s Managed Kubernetes Service (AKS) together with our health model services. Our goal is to offer an off-the-shelf cluster management solution that includes advanced configurations like monitoring.
Of course, working somewhere isn’t just about projects, certificates, and research. I’m happy to say that CloudFuel is a wonderful place to work in general! The team is quite young but already experienced, so there is definitely a welcoming, informal environment. Because we tend to be working on client projects most of the time, the team makes sure to gather at the office on two days every week. We use this time to catch up with each other and host our biweekly meetings. Every two weeks, we also have a general team meeting where we discuss progress on our R&D projects and some customer case studies. As a DevOps engineer, there is a lot of variety in my daily tasks, so it’s nice to get some structure in the agenda through these reserved office days.
There are plenty of activities to get to know each other better, whether it’s our game nights, annual ski trip and team buildings, or broader Cronos initiatives like the Christmas market. We also get the opportunity to visit interesting events, like CloudBrew (which focuses on Azure) and Techorama (which is more of a general IT conference).
In short, being an Azure DevOps Engineer at CloudFuel is an amazingly varied job, and you even get to work outside the boundaries of the job title if you choose to. I’d definitely recommend it!
Want to join the club? We’re still looking for Azure DevOps Engineers, so be sure to check out our open vacancies!
