Shane Copenhaver

What are the education or qualification requirements for this career? 

Education: B.S. Information Technology, Security, A.A.S. Electronic Systems Technology

Certifications:  Project Management Professional, AWS Solutions Architect-Associate, AWS Developer, AWS SysOps Administrator, AWS Cloud Practitioner, Cisco Certified Network Professional - Enterprise, Cisco Certified Network Associate - Security, Security+, Network+, A+, Project+, Linux+, Professional Manager Certification

Describe your typical day.

Review company and product manager priorities. Attend a “standup” meeting to align with the rest of the team

The rest of the day can be wildly different depending on the project, but in my current role, most of my days are spend building out coding file templates for customer applications to ride our platform. These files need to integrate with all cloud services (AWS, GCP, and Azure) and will be on a Kubernetes cluster. I alter/create/edit code for the job needing to be done, and find other ways to make things more smooth for future integrations.

In any lull’s of the day, we do a “find work” kind of mode, which is searching through the platform, looking for things that are maxing out compute power, or some other sort of bottleneck to solve. Constant fixes and making the product better for the customers as a whole.

What types of coursework or concepts did you study to prepare for this career? 

Studied Information Technology fundamentals such as algorithms, data structures, and programming (Python and scripting).

Networking basics: Understanding protocols (TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS) and general server interoperability.

Operating systems: Linux fundamentals, as most DevSecOps work is on Linux environments.

Security principles: Encryption, authentication, vulnerability management, and compliance standards. (CompTIA Security+ certification) ○ DevOps practices: CI/CD pipelines, version control (Git), IaC (infrastructure as code) and containerization tools like Docker and Kubernetes. ○ Cloud computing: Gained knowledge of cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP.○ Project Management: DevOps highly relies on the Agile framework of managing people and resources.

How are you seeing your career changing? 

Rapid Change: In this field, things rapidly change trying to keep up with constantly evolving tech and integration of new things with older things. I integrate new apps from the startup tech community into the platform I work on, to the government world. I’ve seen a quick change with the rise of AI and needing to onboard apps that have AI capabilities built into them. This career field will rapidly change as companies try to take advantage of the newly created things out there.

Expansion to new markets:  Once expanding from the US government market to the UK, NATO, and commercial environments, you experience laws for different countries and their ways of doing things. I’ve work with Polish and Argentinian developers recently and being flexible with hours worked to get overlap is another thing to keep in mind.

How are you using artificial intelligence?

Critical piece:

AI is absolutely a critical piece of the job. AI will not do the job for you, but it will save you hours of time researching and building, and helps resolve errors that were made. An example is if you build some code that is not quite working. AI will assist you in finding your errors and fix other “best-practices” kinds of things.

AI cannot yet do the job for you, and is no substitute for not having your own base knowledge. You have to be able to ask AI intelligent questions to get quality answers. I cannot caution enough on using AI as too big of a crutch.

In a normal day, I use AI to help figure out what log messages or error message coming from a system mean. Many times, putting in some log errors to AI, it can tell you what type of misconfiguration is happening or what arena something is missing from.

The last thing I’ll say about AI, is you are the fire, AI is the diesel fuel. AI will amplify you at your work, help you be more productive, and save you hours at work (and in life). Embrace it!

What are the three most important skills for your career? 

1. Base knowledge:  Mastering things like linux, kubernetes, docker, git, and a programming language will bring you very far. You cannot skimp on your base knowledge. 

2. Curiosity Mindset:This career track is mostly centered around integrating different things. Being curious, trying new things and ways of doing things.

3. Collaboration and Communication:  Bridging the gap between development, operations, and security teams, often acting as a translator to align technical and business goals. Being able to work remotely with cross-functional teams likely of different cultures, and/or different business goals

What is one of the biggest surprises about your career? 

The Constant Evolution: The speed at which tools and methodologies change is surprising. New vulnerabilities, frameworks, and technologies emerge frequently, requiring continuous learning and adaptation. Just when you thought you learned something, you realize you’ve missed an important feature.