Software Engineer Vs DevOps Engineer – What’s the Difference

The popularity of the IT sphere is growing at an unprecedented rate. If you want to find a stable and promising job, then it is the IT industry that is able to provide you with such opportunities. It’s not a secret that at the moment it has become a real gold mine for those who know how to achieve more in their work. Employees in IT can get flexible working hours, vacations, various social guarantees and, of course, attractive salaries. However, despite this popularity, most people confuse the various IT careers. In this guide, we can try to compare what a platform specialist does and how a software developer differs from him/her.

So who are OS developers and what do they do?

An operating system maker is a person who is associated with the programming, management, and customization of computer programs. In the most general form, these guys are engaged in the creation and maintenance of all those applications that we regularly use on our computers or smartphones.

Since you are interested in an OS specialist, you may ask – why do devops companies need professionals in this profile? Of course, there are certain companies that specialize exclusively in operation system development (like Microsoft), but this does not explain the popularity of this profession in general. Well, if you look at the top positions on job search sites, it becomes obvious that most companies need highly specialized developers with in-depth knowledge of a particular platform.

Whether you want to create a product for everyday use or something more specific, like a program for editing audio files, the authors will be the ones behind the creation process. Their responsibilities can sometimes overlap with web creators, so it’s no surprise that both groups are able to work as a team.

Why is app development so popular that it is singled out as a separate kind of programmer? Fine, if we don’t take into account earnings and future career opportunities, then the main reason for this is flexibility.

As a mobile app developer, you need to be flexible in your work. This means that these professionals have to specialize in creating any kind of platforms, if they have sufficient knowledge to do so. This does not only apply to the traditional workplace. If you are experienced in program development, then you might consider working as a freelancer or starting your own project.

With that said, you should now have a clearer understanding of the computer program developing and how it functions. Now let’s find out what a platform engineer does.

What Does the Engineer Do?

Operation system engineering seems to be an area that is difficult to describe in a simpler and understandable way, especially when compared to software development. Let’s try to give a description of this field of activity as concise and understandable for many as possible.

The main path of an IT-team representative is programs.Writing, testing, tuning – all these tasks fall on the shoulders of our “hero”. Moreover, he / she does not care at all about the topic or the functional orientation of the “creation”.

When it comes to his career and specialization, the OS specialist has several different specializations. Some guys prefer to work directly on programs, while others turn to operating system or database management. It all depends on your experience and personal preference – naturally, different types of programmers and specializations offer different sums of money, but they also have different requirements.

If you are a platform maven, you will have to interact with other team members regularly. Otherwise, converting individual tasks and commands into working code is impossible. You will most likely be writing these codes in one of the most popular programming languages. This means that if you want to become an OS engineer, you first need to acquire programming experience. However, as you understand from this guide, such a requirement is not exclusive to engineers — the same requirements apply to OS creators.

What is the difference?

So, we have talked about each of the professions, and the next step is to compare and answer the question, what distinguishes a representative of the two “banks”? Let’s try to answer this question as clearly and concisely as possible.

There is a “golden rule” to draw the line between the two. And it sounds like this: a software engineer can replace a developer, but not vice versa. You ask: “How is that !?”. The fact is that a developer is a specialist who interacts with software, or a QA specialist – with a base for it. Do you see the difference?

Basically, a platform maven develops and maintains the operating systems on which the developer builds the program itself. These two jobs are very closely related to each other, but they are very different from each other in certain aspects.

So – now you have a basic understanding of the two professions and their differences. Let’s dig a little deeper and try to make a comparison based on several criteria.

Criteria and Analysis

We are not going to go into boring details – instead, we’ll cover the simple yet important aspects of each profession.

For our analysis, we use three non-identical aspects – wages, workload, and flexibility. These factors may be controversial for our comparison, but they are very important for every person.

Who Has Better Salary?

This point speaks for itself – a good salary is often a great motivator for choosing a particular profession. Let’s find out how it relates between the two areas.

According to research, most platform creators expect a salary of about 70,000-90,000$ per year, which equals or 5,800-7,500$ per month. At the same time, an engineer may count on a slightly higher income. The average annual salary of such a specialist is 100,000$  per year, which equals 8,300$ per month.

This is a big difference! However, if you remember the golden rule that we mentioned earlier, you are able to understand why this happens.

Who Has Less Stressful Workload?

Workload is an important aspect of any job. Of course, it often depends on your position and the company itself, but some professions have different workloads to some extent.

However, in this case, the load level is practically the same. Both specialists perform a lot of complex tasks. It is worth noting, though, that an OS maker has more responsibilities because he/she does work related to a different specialization.

Where Are There More Choices?

The ability to choose the direction of your activity is very important for both the programmer and the platform creator. If your job is rich in variations, the likelihood that you will find what you need is much higher.

It should be admitted that the programmer in this case is a much more free bird. He/she is able to decide for himself/herself whether he wants to develop applications for smartphones or create software for desktop computers, write accounting programs or specialized databases. The developer has no such range of proposals. He is given only two options – to be an external or an internal specialist.

Resume

After reading our manual up to this point, you might think that a software engineer is better in many ways. However, you shouldn’t forget about personal preference. Whatever advantages this or that profession has, it all comes down to your opinion.

As you noticed, both of these professions are quite difficult to master – they have their own subtleties and their full coverage will go far beyond the usual guide.

The IT industry has always been one of the best areas when it comes to a stable and reliable career path. If you are interested in ever-evolving technologies and certain types of IT programmers are of interest to you – try to break into this area! You never know, maybe this is exactly what you need!