[dns-operations] [OT] What are the most desirable skills, experience & education for [becoming] a good "DNS engineer"?

[Keith Mitchell]

On 01/29/2014 01:27 PM, Stefan wrote:
> I know this may sound a little odd, but have been struggling with 
> trying to identify a good candidate for a DNS (& DHCP) migration of
> a large infrastructure, from Windows based environment, to a vendor 
> based appliance (and keeping such as a full time employee, in the 
> process, in the network group, for administration and lifecycle of 
> such).

IMHO given the requirements stated below, in today's hiring
environment, you are asking for the moon-on-a-stick, with added pony.
Good luck !

> I would think that primordial to a level of strong engineering 
> abilities would be networking (TCP/[UDP]/IP on top of which DNS as 
> protocol and its behaviors knowledge would be a must). The OS level 
> knowledge comes next, as bind on *nix or on F5 (thinking GTM here), 
> for example, needs to be comprehensively understood, as well as the 
> Windows implementation and relationship between DNS and AD.

In previous hiring, I've particularly found it very difficult to find
people who are strong in both of DNS and Windows.

> Security comes as a "given", of course, as name resolution is 
> critical from that stand point, especially on the public facing
> part. Vendor "X" appliance background is also desirable, on top of
> all these, 'cause that would be the "moving to" point, and
> understanding specifics will be critical.

I wouldn't get too hung up on appliance-vendor-specific experience -
while they will all have their deep wrinkles, someone with a good
grounding in sysadmin/neteng basic principles should be able to pick
these up without too much difficulty.

> Add to this knowledge of applications and possible name resolution 
> specifics at layer 7, maybe not following the "rules" of the OS 
> stubs, and I pretty much covered the entire computer science
> spectrum ;-)

I note you did not mention any software engineering/coding skills, I
expect the extent to whether you want these and/vs network operations
skills is something to consider carefully for your environment.

> Considering all of the above - what is your experience and/or
> opinion in regards to how a good DNS engineer (or a good engineer
> with primary responsibility in another technology) came to become?
> What helped you the most in becoming one?

(Having been doing DNS stuff since 1986, I suspect I'm not a good
candidate to answer the second question :-)

My advice would be to find someone who has at least some of the relevant
background, is demonstrably flexible and willing to learn, and then be
willing to make an investment in their growing the extra skills they
need to fill your full requirements.

Hope that is some help,

Keith