DevOps roles explained: Key jobs, responsibilities and skills

12 core DevOps roles and responsibilities

DevOps roles can vary somewhat from one organization to another.

For example, for a business that relies heavily on cloud-based software release pipelines, cloud architects are an important component of effective DevOps. This wouldn't be the case for an organization that builds and deploys software on-premises.

That said, the following 12 key roles and their associated responsibilities are foundational to most DevOps strategies.

1. Software developers

Code is at the core of DevOps processes, and the people who write code are at the core of a DevOps organization. Hence, software developers play a key role in DevOps.

Developers' key responsibilities within DevOps include these tasks:

• Helping to formulate high-level plans for application architecture and features.
• Implementing and updating applications by writing code.
• Fixing code to address problems detected by IT, QA or security engineers -- such as performance bugs or security vulnerabilities.

Ideally, your DevOps strategy is powered by developers who have two main traits. First, they are flexible in their development tool set. They know a variety of programming languages and are familiar with different app development strategies, including Agile methodologies. This flexibility helps your team adjust and improve continuously.

Second, developers who support DevOps must have at least a working understanding of what happens to code after it's deployed, as the core focus of DevOps is bridging the gap between software development and post-deployment software management. Developers don't need to be system administration experts, but they should know how to manage production environments and recognize the challenges IT teams face as they manage code after deployment. This knowledge is required to break down the silo structure that separates development from IT operations.

2. IT operations engineers

IT operations engineers -- sometimes called IT engineers -- are the ops in DevOps. Their core responsibilities under a DevOps operating model include the following:

• Provisioning and deploying the infrastructure necessary to host software.
• Deploying new software releases.
• Monitoring and observing software in production environments to detect issues and, where necessary, collaborating with developers to fix them.

DevOps requires IT engineers who are competent in IT operations, but ideally, they are more than that. They understand the software development process workflows and can collaborate with developers to reduce the friction that occurs when developers hand off code for deployment.

Look for IT engineers who know how to code. Ideally, they have experience writing not just simple system administration scripts but also application code. This knowledge will enable more effective collaboration with developers.

Key roles in a successful DevOps team span coding, security and UX expertise, as well as nontechnical areas.

3. DevOps engineer

Although simply hiring DevOps engineers is hardly enough to excel in DevOps, this role is vital because it helps implement the tools and infrastructure that enable DevOps processes.

To this end, these are DevOps engineers' key areas of responsibility:

• Implementing and managing CI/CD pipelines.
• Building automations to help streamline application releases and infrastructure management, often with the help of infrastructure-as-code frameworks.

Coding is an essential skill for DevOps engineers, but typically, they write automation code rather than application code.

Good DevOps engineers also have a strong understanding of infrastructure design principles and the ability to work with a wide variety of infrastructure platforms -- such as Kubernetes and the various public clouds that an organization might use. 

4. Systems architects

DevOps doesn't require a specific architecture. Success isn't determined by whether you host workloads on-premises or in the cloud, nor will it necessarily matter which OSes you use. Still, a team that wants to design a DevOps-friendly architecture should keep certain goals in mind -- which is where systems architects come in.

The core responsibilities of systems architects under DevOps include the following:

• Assessing various options for hosting DevOps tools, such as different cloud environments, and deciding which best meet business needs.
• Planning and overseeing the implementation of integrations among DevOps tools.
• Managing and monitoring CI/CD pipelines to help keep DevOps processes running smoothly.

Systems architects' roles are similar to those of DevOps engineers, as both focus on managing the tools and infrastructure that power DevOps processes. The difference is that systems architects specialize in the high-level design of DevOps tools and infrastructure, whereas DevOps engineers usually focus more on the implementation.

That said, the overlap between these roles means that some organizations combine them by writing job descriptions that are broad enough for DevOps engineers to cover systems architect responsibilities, and vice versa.

5. QA engineers

Although developers have become more directly involved in software testing in recent years, QA engineers still play a valuable DevOps role. They assist with these essential tasks:

• Designing and writing automated tests that check software releases for performance and reliability before they are deployed.
• Running manual tests in cases where automated testing isn't possible or practical, such as when testing a specialized type of application that isn't supported by an automated testing framework.
• Assessing the results of software tests and working with developers to address bugs detected during testing.

QA engineers focus specifically on defining quality standards for performance, reliability and other factors before software is pushed into production. It's their responsibility to design and run tests that assess whether each new release meets those requirements as it flows through the CI/CD pipeline.

In some ways, the work performed by QA engineers might seem at odds with other DevOps goals. Inefficient software testing introduces delays to the CI/CD process, which hampers the fundamental DevOps goal of CD. To support DevOps most effectively, QA engineers should understand how to maintain software quality and minimize disruptions to other DevOps processes. There are several ways to do this.

One technique is to embrace shift-right testing for noncritical features. This enables some tests to run after code is deployed, reducing the number of tests that run pre-deployment and getting new releases into production faster. This strategy would be inappropriate for critical features -- those should be tested before deployment -- but it works well for testing smaller application components that won't cause serious problems if they fail a post-deployment test.

Good QA engineers can also write efficient tests that run quickly and automatically. They should know the ins and outs of test automation frameworks, such as Selenium, and be skilled at writing tests that cover a lot of ground without taking a long time to run. They must also know how to interpret test results quickly and communicate to developers how to fix whatever caused the failure. Effective communication between developers and QA engineers in this regard is essential to maintaining the CI/CD pipeline flow even when a test fails.

6. UX engineers

A UX engineer isn't necessarily a DevOps role that immediately comes to mind. An expert who can ensure that software pleases end users, though, adds value to your DevOps process by addressing the following responsibilities:

• Collaborating with developers during the software design process to ensure that user needs and expectations remain front and center.
• Prototyping and testing user interfaces.
• Interfacing with end users to determine whether existing interface capabilities best meet their needs and expectations, and if not, devising ways to improve.

UX work is especially important because it's easy to fixate on the technical aspects of DevOps, such as how often a team releases software or how many tests it runs per release cycle. The goal of DevOps shouldn't be merely to deliver software quickly and efficiently; you also want software that delights users. UX engineers can help the rest of the DevOps team maintain that focus.

7. Security engineers

Security engineers -- specifically, ones who understand DevSecOps and can put its tenets into practice -- are another core part of a DevOps organization. They bring a specific and important set of skills to the process:

• Coordinating with developers to plan secure application architectures.
• Coordinating with IT engineers to design secure infrastructure environments.
• Testing applications for security risks and collaborating with developers and IT engineers to mitigate them.

To implement DevSecOps, an organization must establish tools and processes that enable developers, security engineers and IT professionals to collaborate on security operations. All three stakeholder groups should have visibility into security issues so they can address them efficiently. Likewise, developers should be prepared to communicate with security engineers early and often to help design code that is secure from the start. IT engineers should work closely with the security team to ensure that their deployment and management processes follow best practices regarding application and infrastructure security.

8. DevOps evangelists

Not everyone will understand what DevOps means or why the organization should invest in the new tools, processes and people necessary to support it. A DevOps evangelist can help smooth over objections to the technology and organizational changes that DevOps adoption demands by covering the following areas of responsibility:

• Providing general guidance on what it takes to build a DevOps-centric culture.
• Explaining to engineers how DevOps makes their work more efficient.
• Serving as a bridge between business leaders and technical staff when planning and implementing DevOps strategy.

Although some organizations hire dedicated DevOps evangelists, it's also common for businesses to select team members from other DevOps roles to serve as DevOps champions.

9. Site reliability engineer

One can debate whether a site reliability engineer (SRE) is a core DevOps role or merely a complement to DevOps. Either way, it's hard to deny that having SREs on hand is a good thing for DevOps. SREs can accelerate DevOps by covering these responsibilities:

• Working with developers and IT engineers to design stable, high-performing applications and infrastructure.
• Monitoring production environments for performance issues.
• Taking the lead in incident response by mitigating failures efficiently.

To an extent, these responsibilities overlap with other DevOps roles, such as IT engineers (who also play a role in application monitoring) and QA engineers (who run tests to detect performance issues). An important difference, however, is that SREs usually rely heavily on code-based automation to perform their work. This can help make the work of assessing and managing reliability more scalable and efficient, which shows how SREs can add value even in organizations that already have their core DevOps responsibilities covered.

10. Cloud engineer

As noted above, organizations that depend heavily on cloud computing might choose to include cloud engineers within their DevOps teams. Cloud engineers bear primary responsibility for these tasks:

• Administering cloud environments.
• Deploying applications to the cloud and managing them when they are there.
• Integrating the disparate tools and services that exist between clouds in a multi-cloud strategy.

This work can overlap substantially with that of IT engineers, who also deploy and manage applications. However, cloud engineers bring distinct expertise with cloud environments and tools, which more general types of IT engineers sometimes lack.

11. Automation engineer

An automation engineer is another potential type of DevOps role that can be helpful for some organizations. It includes the following key responsibilities:

• Designing and implementing automated workflows.
• Optimizing automated processes to make them more efficient and mitigate risk.
• Troubleshooting and mitigating disruptions to automated workflows.

In the context of DevOps, these responsibilities can overlap with those of DevOps engineers and systems architects, both of whom also focus on automation. But an automation engineer can be a broader role that drives automation across all workflows, not just those specifically related to DevOps. In this way, automation engineers can help bridge the gap between DevOps processes and other workflows that the business depends on.

Note, too, that automation engineers can be especially valuable for organizations experimenting with new types of automation tools, such as AI agents. These have not traditionally featured in DevOps workflows, where automation has conventionally depended on scripts instead, but automation engineers versed in applying emerging technology can help organizations take advantage of cutting-edge automation solutions such as agentic AI.

12. AI DevOps engineer

Speaking of AI, some organizations are now creating AI DevOps engineer roles, whose main responsibilities include the following:

• Using AI to automate CI/CD pipelines.
• Implementing and managing AI tools that can accelerate core DevOps processes, such as software development.
• Helping to ensure that the DevOps team's use of AI tools remains compliant and secure.

Whether it's necessary to devote a DevOps role specifically to AI is debatable; these responsibilities could also be addressed by other engineers, who are increasingly integrating AI into their workflows. But given the complexity of modern AI -- and the deep compliance and security challenges it presents -- a dedicated AI DevOps engineer position can make sense.

Structuring DevOps roles in your organization

Once you've identified the roles that enable DevOps, you need to combine or coordinate them into an actual DevOps team. This can be a major challenge because the DevOps philosophy makes no specific recommendations about how to structure DevOps teams or integrate DevOps into existing teams.

Most businesses choose one of the following approaches to structuring DevOps personnel:

• Replace dev and ops with DevOps. Eliminate separate development and IT operations departments entirely and replace them with a dedicated DevOps team. The new team can include stakeholders from other domains, such as QA, or you can manage roles other than dev and ops as their own teams. This approach works well if you want to structure your entire organization around DevOps and never look back, but it requires a major organizational overhaul. You must also convince all your developers and IT engineers to embrace a new identity as DevOps specialists, which can be culturally jarring.
• Run DevOps alongside dev and ops. Keep your existing development and IT operations teams intact, with a separate DevOps team that operates alongside them and coordinates activities. With this approach, developers and engineers retain their identities and independence as you integrate DevOps into the overall organization. However, you'll have to build a new DevOps team from scratch and convince other teams to work with it.
• Embed DevOps engineers into other teams. This hybrid approach embeds DevOps specialists into your existing dev and ops departments. It requires minimal organizational or cultural change -- but sprinkling DevOps engineers across existing teams might not be enough to fully embrace DevOps. You might end up with an organization that does DevOps lite instead of a total DevOps transformation.

Conclusion: The importance of a clear DevOps role definition

A large part of DevOps' success boils down to defining the right roles. The DevOps roles an organization needs can vary somewhat depending on factors such as the technologies it uses and how broad or narrow it makes certain job descriptions. Ultimately, the goal should be to ensure that all key DevOps responsibilities -- software development and deployment, QA, security, tool management and infrastructure management -- are covered within a holistic operating model.

Note as well that leadership alignment is critical to translating DevOps roles into a collaborative DevOps team. Business leaders must clearly define each role's responsibilities and how it complements others. They must also set clear goals and priorities for DevOps team members to pursue. This can be done, for example, by articulating how extensively the business chooses to integrate AI into its workflows or determining the balance it seeks between software reliability and release velocity.

Finally, it's important to keep in mind that DevOps roles should evolve as organizations mature. Smaller companies, or those that develop and manage a small number of applications, often don't require so many distinct DevOps roles. They might, for instance, fold QA engineering responsibilities into developer roles, because they don't need to perform enough software tests to justify a dedicated QA engineering role.

But over time, as DevOps processes scale up and become more complex, it's common for organizations to build out their DevOps team structure to include all key roles.

Chris Tozzi is a freelance writer, research adviser, and professor of IT and society. He has previously worked as a journalist and Linux systems administrator.