What is all this about?
Over the past months, as I’ve scanned the DevOps job market, one clear pattern emerged: many organizations still treat DevOps as two distinct interests. Below I'll try to take them apart and make you see what makes them tick. Keep in mind that DevOps here, is also very much also SecDevOps.
Although for SevDevOps, there is very little awareness (not to say, interest) of it's benefits. The reasons for that are exactly, because if what we are talking about here: it all gets thrown in for good measure. And therefore lost in the value chain.
Posture 1: DevOps as a Specialized Role
First and most frequently, I see DevOps being promoted as a distinct engineering role, someone to “bridge the gap” between developers who build features and SysAdmins who meddle with infrastructure. DevOps tenuously holds it's title here because they do sit between the two Dev and Ops.
- High demand, high pay: Roles labeled “DevOps Engineer” remain common. Survey data shows 29 % of IT teams recently hired DevOps engineers, with salaries ranging from ≈ US $84 k–126 k (for 1–5 years’ experience) (Spacelift, Brokee).
- Skill scarcity: 37 % of tech leaders list DevOps/DevSecOps as their top skills gap (Spacelift).
- Specialized tool chains: The typical toolkit, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, is solidly perched on the shoulders of these “gap specialists” (Spacelift).
This model boots up fast: hire someone who owns pipelines, automation, containerization, and cloud deployments. Goals are clear. But there’s a danger, concentration of responsibility.
- The DevOps person (or team) becomes a new single point of failure or bottleneck.
- Handovers are frequent: feature dev to DevOps to infra. This can slow delivery and create communication friction.
- From a sustainability perspective, it risks burnout, over-specialization, and unhealthy dependencies on a few key individuals.
- Importantly, it also creates a new silo. A thing most DevOps enthusiasts would confirm, is undesirable.
Posture 2: DevOps as Cultural Paradigm
The alternative isn’t mythical: but it's the holistic, cultural shift where DevOps is embraced by the entire team.
- Ownership by teams: Developers build, deploy, and operate their services with intent.
- Shared accountability removes bottlenecks and single points of failure.
- Platform engineering and Internal Developer Platforms (IDP) enable self-service: developers get or build toolchains, pipelines, and environments on demand, not via a middleman (Baytech Consulting, Wikipedia).
- This model aligns with DORA values: teams become elite, with continuous delivery in under a day, blameless culture, and empowered teams (Cortex), security and operations are embedded in their work, so cooperation from the get-go.
Moreover, in 2025 we’re seeing DevOps evolve:
- AI/ML/LLM are weaving into pipelines for predictive incident management, auto-test generation, and self-healing systems (DevOps.com, Baytech Consulting).
- DevSecOps embeds security into CI/CD, reducing friction and mitigating risk early (DevOps.com, H2K Infosys).
- Platform teams focus on developer experience, not just tooling, measuring success by throughput, stability, and satisfaction (Baytech Consulting, Wikipedia).
- Sustainability is gaining traction: emphasis on culture, CAMS framework, and decision frameworks to embed maintainability and long-term viability (arXiv).
*Simple is not a substitution for easy, remember that.
My own evaluation of the Two Approaches
| Aspect | DevOps Specialist Role | DevOps as Culture & Platform Engineering |
|---|---|---|
| Time to start | Fast – hire someone who “owns it” | Slower, requires cultural change and tooling |
| Dependency model | Centralized, single point of failure | Decentralized, shared responsibility |
| Bottlenecks | High – one specialist becomes bottleneck | Low – self-service pipelines reduce friction |
| Scalability | Limited – needs more specialists as teams grow | Higher – shared platforms scale horizontally |
| Sustainable resilience | Fragile – burnout and silos risk | Robust – ownership and collaboration foster health |
| Security integration | Managed by specialist role(s) | Integrated by default across teams |
| Innovation & autonomy | Constrained, dependencies slow progress | Empowered teams iterate rapidly |
My Perspective: Sustainability First
If you have read my other posts in the pasts, you must be beginning to know me: If it's not durable, I'm going to find it difficult to advocate for it. So as in earlier articles, I’ve emphasized sustainability, developments we can maintain, evolve, and depend on long-term. The specialist-centric DevOps model is expedient, but it carries perilous sustainability risks: excessive human dependency, siloed knowledge, and process fragility.
The cultural DevOps model, powered by team ownership and platform engineering, is harder to reach, but it maps directly onto sustainability. Services become self-reinforcing:
- Less burnout: Shared responsibility dilutes the load.
- Fewer bottlenecks: Self-service tooling empowers teams.
- Cultural resilience: Practices and standards survive personnel changes.
Riddle me this: Which Offers Better Value?
- Is hiring another expert a quick win, but a long-term liability?
- Is investing in cultural transformation and platform engineering more resource-intensive up-front, but far more resilient and sustainable?
In other words: Do we value fast fixes, or building systems (both human and technical) that endure?
What’s your experience been? Are your DevOps efforts centered around a bridge-role model or embedded across your teams? Which path contributed most to sustainable operations at scale?
Let’s continue the conversation, and build DevOps systems that empower people first, tools second.
Coming up next:
Agentic SecDevOps, is it for you?
No comments:
Post a Comment