Common DevOps Roles and Responsibilities Today: Who’s on a DevOps Team & How These Roles Work Together

Source: Dev.to

Key Takeaways

• DevOps unifies development and operations into a collaborative, automated lifecycle, emphasizing continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), shared responsibility, and accelerated, reliable software delivery.
• Key DevOps roles – DevOps engineer, developer, product owner, QA/testing engineer, security engineer, and site‑reliability engineer (SRE) – each contribute specialized skills to distinct phases of the pipeline, ensuring seamless integration and high‑quality releases.
• Successful DevOps adoption relies on clear responsibilities, end‑to‑end automation, strong communication, and a continuous‑improvement culture. Proactive security and SRE‑driven monitoring guarantee resilient, high‑quality outcomes.
• Business context: All organizations operate in a constant state of flux, driven by a fast‑paced, competitive, technology‑enabled environment where opportunities and risks abound. The pressure to deliver better technology solutions faster and more cost‑effectively has never been greater—especially as generative AI becomes the focus of innovation initiatives.
• DevOps value: By fostering a culture of collaboration and communication among IT teams, DevOps enables a faster, smoother flow of work from development to production. The 2024 State of DevOps highlights three themes that drive success: efficiency, speed, and security.
• People first: Agile, scalable teams are the essential ingredient for staying ahead in the digital‑transformation race.

More DevOps Resources for Success

• DevOps events and conferences to attend
• DORA and DevOps metrics
• DevOps certifications to earn
• Roles and responsibilities in DevOps

DevOps Team Philosophy

Being part of a DevOps team doesn’t mean you have an entire team made up of “DevOps Engineers.” Instead, a DevOps‑oriented company spreads accountability for application development, testing/QA, and release across the whole engineering and IT organization.

Because DevOps teams are set up independently and autonomously, they must:

• Be multi‑skilled.
• Adopt a service mindset that focuses on delivering quality first by addressing defects early.

These teams need well‑defined roles aligned in terms of priorities, goals, and time frames. According to DASA, the preferred structure for “DevOps done right” involves two complementary groups:

1. Platform team – manages the underlying infrastructure of a platform.
2. Business‑system teams (e.g., CRM, HR, BI) – develop and manage end‑user products and services that run on the platform.

The platform services, offered through self‑service and automation, enable autonomy and speed for business‑system teams to manage the entire lifecycle of their services.

DevOps Team Structure (Source: DASA)

Platform Team Roles

Platform engineering teams are responsible for deploying and maintaining internal developer platforms (IDPs) that provide self‑service tools for coding, building, testing, and releasing software. As a strategic partner for business‑system teams, the platform team standardizes processes and tools, increasing developer productivity. DORA research shows that a dedicated platform team translates into measurable productivity gains for development teams.

Core Skillset

• System integration
• Process automation
• Continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD)
• Performance testing
• Monitoring

Typical Roles

Platform Manager

• Provides oversight for the platform engineering team, ensuring smooth operation of platform services.
• Guides task prioritization, resolves team issues, and secures required resources.
• Outlines technology‑evolution roadmaps for underlying infrastructure and systems.
• Leads recruitment and drives overall performance to meet organizational goals.

DevOps Engineer

The DevOps engineer carries out the infrastructure‑operations activities that support product development (SFIA definition):

• Provision and adapt infrastructure components to meet evolving user and service‑provider needs.
• Manage virtual, cloud, and hybrid/multi‑cloud environments.
• Automate tasks via scripting, coding, orchestration tools, and infrastructure‑as‑code (IaC) practices, including CI/CD pipelines.
• Ensure infrastructure security through regular updates, patch management, and adherence to cybersecurity policies (DevSecOps).
• Monitor infrastructure performance and its impact on efficiency, security posture, and sustainability.
• Collaborate with development teams to onboard platform requirements.
• Use containerization technologies to enhance application deployment and scalability.

(Related reading: “What is a Platform Engineer?”)

Product Manager

• Translates the needs and pain points of business‑system teams into actionable tasks for engineers.
• Ensures the platform team understands its contribution to overall business goals.
• Helps prioritize automation tasks.
• Drives alignment and focus, enabling effective collaboration and communication with business teams.
• May be a standalone role or combined with the platform‑manager role.

End of cleaned markdown segment.

Business System Team Roles

The business systems team owns the entire product lifecycle. Therefore, they’re responsible for managing the end‑users and associated services.

In a DevOps environment, business system teams:

• Develop and deploy their application and infrastructure code on the platforms (maintained by the platform team).
• Access these platforms through self‑service and automation facilities via APIs.
• Reuse the infrastructure without impeding speed and autonomy.

These autonomous teams constantly interact with the platform team to provide strategic direction and improvement ideas. Those ideas are tracked on a backlog for implementation.

Typical Scrum‑Based Accountabilities

Additional DevOps Roles

Other roles that are key to driving DevOps excellence within an organization include:

DevOps Architect

• Definition & Design: Defines, designs, and oversees implementation of strategies, frameworks, tools, and processes that the rest of the DevOps team follows.
• Enterprise‑Level Ambassador: Sets the DevOps way of working across the enterprise, focusing on:
  • Solving complex business problems.
  • Driving maturity improvement to achieve organizational objectives.
• Senior‑Level Requirements: Requires expertise in business, development, and operational domains.

DevOps Governance

• Promotes awareness of business risks and compliance requirements.
• Guides team members on the intent behind appropriate controls (e.g., secure development practices, change‑management approval workflows).
• Communicates and supports implementation of checks, balances, and best practices to mitigate risks in automated deployments.

Related reading: GRC – governance, risk, compliance explained.

Release Manager

• Coordinates planning, scheduling, and control of software releases at both product and platform levels across multiple teams.
• Particularly active in environments with legacy infrastructure where continuous delivery isn’t possible, requiring manual coordination of releases.

Related reading: Release management in DevOps.

DevOps Roles Should Support DevOps Goals

While the list above covers the most common DevOps roles, remember:

• Title ≠ Responsibility: Different titles may cover the same responsibilities described here.
• No One‑Size‑Fits‑All: There isn’t a single tool or process that works for every team. Teams must discover the skills and practices that fit their unique environments.

The ultimate goal of a successful DevOps practice is building faster and building better through high visibility and smart collaboration.

Regularly Assess Collaboration

Ask yourself and your team:

1. Communication: What’s the best way to communicate during product development and throughout the software delivery lifecycle?
2. Real‑Time Collaboration: How can IT professionals and developers collaborate in real‑time and surface issues faster?