What Is DevOps?

DevOps is a software development approach that combines and integrates development and IT operations to automate workflows, streamline deployments and improve collaboration across the application lifecycle.

DevOps relies on automation, collaborative practices and cultural philosophies to help organizations deliver applications and services more quickly, reliably and efficiently.

What Does a DevOps Engineer Do?

DevOps engineers bridge the gap between development and IT operations by unifying processes, tools and practices across the software lifecycle. They break down silos through Agile methods, enabling faster and more reliable deployments.

DevOps engineer responsibilities include:

• Automating workflows.
• Managing continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
• Maintaining infrastructure as code.
• Ensuring applications are deployed securely and monitored effectively.

What Are DevOps Tools?

DevOps tools automate key processes such as integration, testing, deployment and monitoring, helping reduce errors, speed up delivery and improve collaboration across teams. To be effective, engineers must ensure these tools are compatible with development and production environments and do not introduce regressions.

Common DevOps tools and technologies include:

• Version control
• Continuous integration servers
• Configuration management
• Deployment automation
• Containers
• Infrastructure orchestration
• Monitoring and analytics
• Testing and cloud quality tools
• Network protocols

These tools support tasks like building code, managing dependencies, resolving conflicts and streamlining deployments. By standardizing workflows, they also make it easier for teams to collaborate and work with one another’s code.

How to Start Learning DevOps

Learning and applying DevOps practices requires a mix of technical and organizational skills that support Agile software engineering. While specific needs vary by team and company, several core competencies are commonly expected, including:

• Proficiency in a programming language such as Java, C, C#, Python or Ruby.
• Knowledge of operating system fundamentals (kernel management, memory, resources, I/O, virtualization, file systems).
• Experience with cloud deployment.
• Understanding of networking concepts (IP addressing, TLS, routing, firewalls, DNS, HTTP).
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code (IaC).
• Hands-on experience with DevOps automation and monitoring tools (e.g., AWS, Prometheus, Splunk).
• Awareness of major cloud providers like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and AWS.

Frequently Asked Questions