Paddy Power Betfair: Network engineers and operations need to skill-up for DevOps

Paddy Power Betfair hiring network engineers with Python skills

Network engineers and other IT staff involved in operations will need to become multi-skilled in the future - and organisations will inevitably have to help them develop those skills - if they are not to get left behind by DevOps.

That's the message from Steven Armstrong, principal DevOps automation engineer at the online and High Street gambling operator Paddy Power Betfair.

Speaking in front of an audience of more than 200 specialists at today's Computing DevOps Summit 2017, Armstrong explained how the organisation has changed as a result of its embrace of DevOps.

"When I first joined the company, we had an outsourced team building the cloud platform. What happened is that the outsourced team were sitting in a different office and never talked to any of the developer community. They were literally building what they thought the developers wanted," said Armstrong.

He continued: "What the business has done is take people that had a development background and also coupled them with network engineers, infrastructure guys because those skills don't go away. They have a lot to bring to the table. Then, what we have done is put them together to build the new platform.

"We have had to recruit new staff in some areas. Some people left, but what we are looking at now is hiring network engineers, and hiring those with Python skills.

"So the skills that we need in network engineers has definitely changed because the role is evolving. It's not standing still and people have to pick-up those skills," Armstrong said.