What Does a DevOps Engineer Do?
(Published by Jenner Acosta, Frontend Developer & DevOps enthusiast)
Hi dev friends 👋 Today we’re going to explore a role that often sounds mysterious: DevOps. You’ve heard it, seen it in job offers, but… what does a DevOps actually do? Let’s break it down step by step with simple examples.
What does DevOps mean?
DevOps is a combination of Development + Operations.
It’s not just a tool or a traditional role with a fixed definition—it’s more of a culture / mindset / set of practices that closes the gap between the people who build the software and those who keep it running in production.
So, a DevOps engineer:
- helps integrate software development (code, features, functionalities) smoothly with production (servers, deployments, monitoring).
- automates processes that used to be manual (and painful).
- ensures reliability and scalability.
Main responsibilities of a DevOps
Here are some typical tasks a DevOps professional handles:
| Area | Responsibilities |
|---|---|
| Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) | Builds pipelines to automate tests, builds, and deployments. Example: every time a push is made, tests run, artifacts are built, and if everything passes, it’s deployed to staging. |
| Infrastructure as Code (IaC) | Defines infrastructure (servers, networks, load balancers, storage) through code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible…). This allows versioning, reproducibility, and automation. |
| Monitoring and Logging | Sets up tools to track performance, errors, bottlenecks, and alerts. Examples: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Datadog. If something fails, it notifies the right people. |
| Operational Security | Keeps deployments, access, and data secure. Patches, secrets, permissions, and compliance with best practices. |
| Scalability & Reliability | Designs systems that can scale with demand, tolerate failures, and recover quickly. High availability, redundancy, failover. |
| General Automation | Scripts and tools to reduce manual work: automated deployments, backups, updates, repetitive tests. |
| Collaboration & Culture | Bridges development, operations, QA, and infrastructure teams. Promotes feedback loops, shared responsibility, and good practices. |
A simple example
Let’s imagine you’re building a photo-sharing web app that needs to be online 24/7.
- Developer writes the app, runs unit tests, pushes it to GitHub.
- A CI pipeline triggers → runs tests → if all pass, builds a container image (Docker).
- IaC defines the cloud infrastructure: a cluster (EKS/GKE/etc.), a load balancer, storage, and database—all in code.
- A CD pipeline deploys automatically to staging and then production if checks pass.
- Monitoring logs uploads, errors, latency, CPU/RAM usage. If something fails, alerts are sent.
- Autoscaling is configured: if traffic spikes (say, a viral campaign), new instances spin up and traffic balances automatically.
Why DevOps matters
- Less human error → automation reduces mistakes.
- Speed → new features ship faster without sacrificing quality.
- Availability → when issues occur, the system recovers or alerts quickly.
- Scalability → as the business grows, infrastructure can keep up.
- Better collaboration → dev and ops speak the same language.
Popular DevOps tools
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CircleCI
- Containers & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Ansible
- Monitoring & Logging: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK (Elasticsearch/Logstash/Kibana), Datadog
- Cloud Providers: AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean
- Secrets & Security: Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, KMS
Quick Recap
- DevOps = development + operations → collaboration, automation, reliability.
- It’s not just “someone who deploys apps” but a bridge between teams.
- They ensure software is not only built, but runs well, scales, and stays secure.
- Core practices: CI/CD, IaC, monitoring, automation, culture.
💡 Final note: DevOps isn’t a single job title—it’s a mindset. Whether you’re a developer, sysadmin, or cloud engineer, applying DevOps principles will make your software lifecycle faster, safer, and more reliable.