| name | devops |
| description | Guides DevOps—CI/CD pipelines, GitOps, release management, container delivery, observability,
and SRE practices for build/deploy systems.
Use when building or fixing pipelines, implementing GitOps, tuning alerts and SLOs, or managing
on-call/incidents for delivery infrastructure—not for IDP/golden paths/developer portals
(platform-engineer), raw VPC/IaC design (infrastructure-engineer), rollout cutover planning
(deployment-strategist), security gates (devsecops), app features (senior-fullstack-developer),
multi-team program coordination (technical-program-manager), or incident program design
(severity, on-call, postmortems, paging integrations—incident-management-engineer). For Kubernetes
cluster bootstrap, Helm releases, add-ons, and cluster-level debugging, use cluster-deployment-engineer.
App latency profiling and load testing: performance-engineer. ML safeguard serving:
ml-infrastructure-engineer-safeguards. RL training platform jobs: ml-systems-engineer-rl-engineering.
|
DevOps
When to Use
- Build, fix, or optimize CI/CD pipelines and release automation
- Implement GitOps, artifact promotion, container delivery, or environment automation
- Set up service observability, SLOs, alerting, and runbooks for delivery infrastructure
- Operate on-call workflows for build, deploy, and runtime reliability issues
- Standardize deployment mechanics for application teams
When NOT to Use
- Design rollout strategy, cutover, rollback triggers, or release risk tiers →
deployment-strategist
- Build internal developer portals, golden paths, or platform-as-product roadmaps →
platform-engineer
- Provision core cloud networks, IAM, or Terraform modules as the main task →
infrastructure-engineer
- Add security gates, SBOMs, artifact signing, or CI threat modeling →
devsecops
- Design SEV programs, paging policy, or postmortem process →
incident-management-engineer
- Deep SLO/error-budget program, PRR, reliability engineering per service →
site-reliability-engineer
Related skills
| Need | Skill |
|---|
| SLOs, error budgets, PRR, reliability ownership | site-reliability-engineer |
| Cloud VPC, IAM, Terraform modules | infrastructure-engineer |
| Managed cloud services and networking | cloud-engineer |
| SAST, SBOM, OIDC hardening, pipeline security | devsecops |
| Data pipeline SLAs and warehouse ops | data-system-ops-lead |
| App code, APIs, UI | senior-fullstack-developer |
| Rollout strategy, cutover plans, change tiers | deployment-strategist |
| IDP, golden paths, developer portal, platform APIs | platform-engineer |
| Cross-team milestones, RAID, launch council | technical-program-manager |
| SEV model, on-call program, postmortem process | incident-management-engineer |
| K8s cluster deploy and operations | cluster-deployment-engineer |
| App profiling, load tests, perf regression | performance-engineer |
Core Workflows
1. CI/CD pipeline design
Standard stage order:
checkout → lint/test → build → publish artifact → deploy non-prod → integration/e2e → promote prod
Checklist:
See references/cicd_releases.md for GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and deployment patterns.
2. GitOps and environments
- Declare desired state in git (Helm, Kustomize, Terraform for apps)
- Sync via Argo CD or Flux; drift detection enabled
- One branch or path per environment; promotion via PR
- Secrets never in git—use External Secrets / sealed secrets
- Audit sync events and failed reconciliations
See references/gitops_environments.md for promotion flows and config layering.
3. Observability and SRE
Minimum observability per service:
| Signal | What to capture |
|---|
| Metrics | RED/USE: rate, errors, duration, saturation |
| Logs | Structured JSON, correlation ID, no secrets |
| Traces | Critical paths and cross-service calls |
SLO workflow: pick SLI → set target and error budget → alert on burn rate → review in weekly ops.
See references/observability_sre.md for SLI examples, alert hygiene, and runbook links.
4. Incident and on-call
- Triage severity (customer impact, data risk)
- Mitigate (rollback, scale, feature flag)
- Communicate status on cadence
- Post-incident review within 48h for SEV1–2
- Track action items to closure
See references/incident_oncall.md for severity matrix and handoff template.
5. Developer platform (optional)
- Golden paths: template repos, standard pipelines, local dev parity
- Self-service environments with guardrails
- Cost and quota visibility per team
See references/platform_engineering.md for IDP scope and build-vs-buy.
When to load references
- Pipelines and releases →
references/cicd_releases.md
- GitOps and env promotion →
references/gitops_environments.md
- Metrics, SLOs, alerts →
references/observability_sre.md
- Incidents and on-call →
references/incident_oncall.md
- Internal developer platform →
references/platform_engineering.md
