What is a DevOps engineer? Roles, responsibilities, and why they matter (in simple words)

The product is a living mechanism. And DevOps knows how it works, where its weak points are, and how to make it run faster without overheating. Later, we’ll take a closer look at what a DevOps engineer does in detail, but for now, I’ll show you what every product loses if there’s no DevOps in the development strategy.

1. Technical debt

When infrastructure is not automated and documented, changes to the system are made manually, without control. If a team member departs, their knowledge also leaves. DevOps describes infrastructure as code, so that each element can be restored, preserved or scaled automatically, reducing risks and accelerating development.

2. Invisible downtime

QA checks the product before release. But once it’s live, who makes sure it keeps running smoothly? No one watches the system in real time, excluding DevOps. If something breaks, no one notices until users complain. Services crash and stay down. Traffic grows, but the system doesn’t scale. Problems pile up silently hurting user experience and business.

3. Slowed down time-to-market

Without automation, code deployment is manual, slow, and error-prone. Developers spend their time configuring servers, deployments, rollbacks, and environments instead of developing. Bugs slip through, and rollbacks take time. What is the role of a DevOps engineer? To streamline and automate these steps so updates ship faster, with fewer errors and less overhead. 

4. Suffering security

Without a DevOps approach, security often becomes an afterthought. Developers focus on building features. System administrators focus on keeping systems running. And no one takes full responsibility for security across the entire pipeline from code to production: unified visibility, late security checks, no monitoring.

5. You're losing money

Every crash, delayed release, or undetected bug leads to direct financial loss. And the more users you have, the greater the impact. A DevOps engineer helps reduce these risks by making your product more stable, faster to update, and less reliant on manual processes, which means fewer failures and more revenue.

Since DevOps is a team effort between development, operations, and testing, there’s no single tool. It’s more of a toolchain made up of multiple solutions. Now more details about the DevOps engineer role for your project.

1. Automation of development, testing and delivery processes

A DevOps engineer automates routine tasks. Instead of developers or testers doing everything by hand, DevOps sets up systems that automatically: 

• Combine new code with the main codebase (called code integration) 

• Run tests to check if the new code works (automated testing)

• Deliver the working code to servers (deployment) 

• Quickly undo changes if something breaks (rollback). 

2. Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD)

Another role of a DevOps engineer is CI/CD ensuring. It is an approach that helps get new code into the final product quickly and safely. It has two main parts: 

3. Infrastructure management

If you ask, “What’s a DevOps engineer doing else” I would say they manage the technical “backbone” of the product: servers, databases, networks both in the cloud (like AWS, Azure) and on local servers. They make sure:

• Servers are always available and stable 

• Systems can handle more users if needed (scaling) 

• Data is backed up and can be restored if something goes wrong. 

Infrastructure as Code 

Instead of configuring servers manually, DevOps engineers write code to describe the infrastructure setup. Through these files they can edit, test, and version. This lets teams create and update servers automatically, avoid manual errors, and instantly rebuild systems if needed.

Containerization 

One more answer for “What is the work of a DevOps engineer” is containerization. DevOps packages apps into containers (like digital boxes with everything the app needs to run). This helps launch the app on any computer with the same results and avoid bugs that happen in one environment but not in another. 

4. Microservices

Modern apps are often built from many small parts – microservices. So, another responsibility of a DevOps engineer is to work closely with microservices architecture. Each small part does one job and works on its own. If one fails, the rest keeps working, so your users aren’t affected. DevOps engineers help these services communicate, scale and run smoothly. 

5. Security and compliance

What makes a good DevOps engineer is DevSecOps – a combination of development, security, and operations. Security is incorporated into the software at the outset instead of being added later, which can be expensive and time-consuming. This approach:  

• Scan code and servers for security risks before launch 

• Protect data and access to systems 

• Follow industry rules (like GDPR or ISO).

6. Monitoring and improving system performance

After releasing a new version of the software, our work continues. We constantly monitor systems and apps with smart tools to respond quickly to problems and prevent them by: 

• Fixing slowdowns and bottlenecks 

• Avoiding downtime and crashes 

• Quickly finding and fixing configuration or hardware issues 

• This keeps our services stable and reliable. 

So, what are the roles and responsibilities of a DevOps engineer? From automation and infrastructure management to security, performance monitoring, and more.  

For better clarity, here is a quick comparison table showing how the goals and responsibilities of a DevOps engineer compare to those of related roles. 

Previously, all DevOps engineer roles and responsibilities were handled by developers, but with the advent of a new philosophy, the division of tasks has shown better results for development. 

The final thoughts 

What should a DevOps engineer know? Good DevOps knows how to make code run. But more importantly, they make your business run with fewer delays, better structure, happier clients, and a team that’s actually proud of the process, removing blockers, preventing bugs at the handoff between teams, and turning fragile processes into resilient, repeatable systems. If you're interested in avoiding duct-taped releases, phantom bugs, and stalled team velocity, let's talk. Our DevOps team can help you build the kind of technical foundation that feels light to run, not heavy to carry.