Today’s technological landscape demands speed, accuracy, and constant innovation. This means that developers working to satisfy such demands must constantly look for ways to automate the aspects of their jobs that are a bit more repetitive and don’t require constant human involvement.
One tool developers use to make Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery and/or Deployment a reality is Jenkins, an open-source server written in Java. Jenkins implements these delivery workflows, also known as pipelines, throughout the entirety of the software development life cycle to accelerate the process in an automated fashion.
From the building, testing, documenting, and eventual deploying of a software project, Jenkins supports developers via the orchestration of a chain of actions to achieve the Continuous Integration process. Currently, Jenkins boasts well over 200,000 installations and continues to grow in popularity day by day.
In this article, you will learn, among other things, how to hire Jenkins developers.
Hiring Guide
Software companies and developers choose to work with Jenkins as it helps accelerate their software development process thanks to the server’s ability to build and test at a rapid rate. As a server-based application, Jenkins requires a webserver to implement workflows or pipelines. Pipelines assist developers by automating testing and reporting on individual changes in a large codebase in real time.
The Jenkins pipelines then facilitate the integration of the disparate code branches into the main branch. It also has the ability to quickly detect codebase defects, build the software, automate necessary build testing, prepare the codebase for deployment, and eventually deploy the code to containers and virtual machines. When implemented, Jenkins continuously tests project builds and displays errors in the early dev stages to save resources.
Plugins help to enhance the Jenkins system while extending its capabilities and integrations with other software. Developers have the ability to download plugins from the online Jenkins plugin repository, which currently features over 1,500 plugins for a wide array of common use cases. These plugins help with tasks such as integrating other developer tools into the environment, administrating Jenkins, and managing build and source code.
One of the most common uses of plugins is the integration of Continuous Deployment and Continuous Integration sources and destinations. This includes software version control systems, container runtime systems, as well as public and private cloud instances. These plugins are one of many advantages to Jenkins.
The flexibility and customization available when using Jenkins, as well as its more mature age, make it one of the go-to options for developers looking for a way to manage Continuous Deployment and Integration. It’s a well-understood tool with extensive documentation, a generally broad knowledge base, and a wealth of community resources available.
Jenkins developers have been and will continue to be in high demand in the development community. Companies looking to streamline processes while identifying problems proactively require Jenkins experts to help make the development process as smooth and effective as possible.
Interview Questions
What are the benefits of using Jenkins?
- Ability to cache build failures at the integration stage.
- Can generate an automatic build report notification for each stage in the source code.
- Integrates with the LDAP mail server to notify developers of build report successes or failures.
- It helps developers achieve Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment in an Agile, test-driven development environment.
- Allows for the easy tracking of bugs in the early stages of development to help prevent errors from deployment to production.
What’s a Jenkins pipeline and what are the types of pipelines?
A pipeline is a special type of Jenkins job that’s essentially a sequence of automated steps controlled by a defined set of rules or logic. This then orchestrates long-running activities that sometimes span across many build agents. These pipelines, formerly known as workflows, help organize complex activities that aren’t easily achieved when working in a more freestyle method.
Pipelines in Jenkins are either a declarative pipeline or a scripted pipeline. Declarative pipelines use a variety of generic, predefined build stages or steps (code snippets) to build a job according to the specifics of a build or automation’s needs. Scripted pipelines allow for the custom definition of these steps or stages using Groovy syntax. This provides better control for the developers while allowing for the fine tuning of execution levels.
What does the Continuous Integration process look like in Jenkins?
Continuous integration is the practice of constantly integrating a developer’s code changes into the main code branch while simultaneously testing said code through automated means. The results of the test decide whether the change actually deploys or not.
When using Jenkins, the process generally looks like the following:
- The developer makes a change, followed by a commit or pull request in the feature or development branch.
- The source control management system generates necessary events.
- The specific plugins installed detect these events from the repository configurations and are then used to trigger the build/dependent/test jobs within Jenkins.
- After testing and dependent jobs have finished, the system applies the change/patch label according to the test status.
- If ready, the Continuous Deployment tool deploys the change to the main code branch.
Job Description
We are looking for a skilled Jenkins developer to manage and improve the Continuous Deployment and Continuous Integration processes for software development. This includes workflow staging, performance evaluations, implementation of CI/CD best practices and automation pipelines, and integration of secure automation testing.
Responsibilities
- Creating and developing Continuous Deployment and Continuous Integration pipelines within Jenkins
- Supporting software development and software engineering teams using automated testing
- Implementation of DevOps and Agile best practices
- Integration of security automation tooling
Qualifications
- 3+ years experience in build automation
- 3+ years experience in Jenkins
- Experience building CI/CD pipelines
- Experience using GIT and artifact repositories
- Knowledge of Jenkins architecture performance tuning
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills for working with full development teams
