Chef Launches Certification and Training Program Amid Increasing Demand for DevOps Skills

New Certification Program Provides Developers, System Administrators, and IT Professionals with Automation Skills at the Core of DevOps

AUSTIN, TX – July 12, 2016 – From ChefConf 2016, Chef, the leader in automation for DevOps, today announced the Chef Certification Program, providing IT practitioners with the tools and resources necessary to build modern automation expertise. This new program combines with Chef’s existing Partner Certification Program to offer skills training and best practices for Chef’s ecosystem of technology and services providers to successfully deploy, service, and support Chef deployments.

Based on nearly 10 years of expertise in automation, the Chef Certification Program uses a combined knowledge and performance assessment approach to demonstrate Chef proficiency in real world scenarios. This means learning and testing Chef skills for a variety of capabilities, from local cookbook development to Windows automation. Combining the extensive curriculum of Learn Chef — including tutorials, best practice guides, in-person meetups, and online training — with customized assessments for corresponding skills “badges,” the Chef Certification Program enables practitioners to attain the skills most applicable to their role, organization, and career goals. Assessment badges reflect a mastery of practical skills for solving the toughest IT and business challenges using automation.

As the enterprise increasingly employs DevOps initiatives to drive business velocity, automation skills are fundamental to achieving success. Automation skills also present a significant career opportunity for IT practitioners. As DevOps adoption continues to rise, the value of Chef capabilities is also dramatically increasing. The most recent Dice Technology Salary Survey found that practitioners who cultivate Chef skills can command more than $130,000 in annual salary, ranking among the top ten technology skills in the world.

Program Highlights

The Chef Certification Program offers credentials to developers, system administrators, and IT practitioners everywhere who demonstrate the skills needed for DevOps success using Chef products. This new program augments Chef’s existing Partner Certification Program by providing a clear skills development path that partners can use to train their services and support teams on Chef Automate.

Badges immediately available include:

Basic Chef Fluency: This badge certifies the recipient understands and can explain Chef concepts and features. From mastering common Chef terminology to detailing how Chef works, practitioners who earn this badge are certified in Chef’s basic design philosophy and value proposition across both open source and commercial platforms.
Local Cookbook Development: To obtain this badge, practitioners must demonstrate the ability to properly develop a basic Chef cookbook. This means the recipient can take an existing process and automate it using Chef recipes that follow data-driven and composable code patterns. The Local Cookbook Development badge certifies the recipient can compose a recipe, package it in a Cookbook, test, and deploy the code to model an automated solution for a previously manual process or task.

Badges for Chef on Windows and Extending Chef, both offering practitioners an opportunity to become certified for more specific and advanced skills, will be available later this year.

Chef certification assessments are delivered online in a scheduled, timed, and proctored exam environment at https://training.chef.io/certification. Certification is valid for two years.

Supporting Quotes

“Automation skills are at the heart of DevOps. Our new Certification Program gives practitioners a direct path to not only drive DevOps success within their organizations, but also advance their own careers. Plus, it’s now even easier for our partners to get their teams certified on Chef.” — Brian Turner, Director of Learning Services, Chef

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