WHAT DOES A DEVOPS MANAGER DO?

Published: Oct 25, 2024 - The DevOps Manager is responsible for designing, developing, and managing operations of cloud infrastructure services. This role oversees cloud provisioning, cost planning, and daily processes such as Change Management and Incident Management while driving strategies to modernize tools and processes for secure and scalable operations. Collaboration with engineering teams and external partners ensures compliance with deployment standards and effective resolution of performance issues, all while leading and mentoring a team of Operations Engineers.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for DevOps Manager

1. DevOps Manager Duties

  • Leadership: Lead the design and deliver software and infrastructure to improve the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of services.
  • Design: Design and evolve the CI/CD systems and processes.
  • Cloud Security: Manage the cloud security principles and define best practices.
  • Environment Management: Manage the company’s deployment environments, including production.
  • Team Development: Recruit and develop a team of DevOps engineers.
  • Cost Efficiency: Conduct periodic on-call duties and drive for AWS cost efficiency.
  • Project Management: Lead transformation projects for cross-team implementation work, particularly around Docker containers and Kubernetes.
  • Coaching: Coach teams on processes and practices.
  • Roadmap Planning: Assist the director with roadmap planning and development goals.
  • Technology Management: Anticipate and manage technology evolution and map it to business solutions.
  • Agile Management: Run scrum, working sessions, and daily stand-up meetings.
  • Documentation: Write documentation and perform architectural reviews.

2. DevOps Manager Details

  • Process Management: Strategize, plan, and manage all processes related to continuous integration, continuous delivery, and process automation.
  • Operational Excellence: Mature operations and operational standard methodologies in partnership with the application development teams.
  • Cloud Architecture: Collaborate with application development teams and provide guidance on the deployment architectures in the cloud for scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
  • Collaboration: Collaborate with Development, QA, and Support teams daily to ensure that all test and production environments are fully functional.
  • Issue Resolution: Work closely with the application teams in resolving vulnerabilities, building the continuous deployment pipeline, and supporting the infrastructure.
  • Continuous Improvement: Drive continuous improvement of the operational pipeline and overall software release process.
  • Documentation: Provide advice and documentation on standard methodologies throughout the full software development lifecycle.
  • Team Leadership: Lead system engineers who are responsible for managing the infrastructure, deployment, vulnerability management, and CI/CD of 50+ applications on virtual machine platforms and on AWS/GCP.
  • Solution Finding: Search together with colleagues for the best solutions that independently translate to the perfect result.
  • Cloud Development: Co-build next-level cloud platforms and set up CI/CD pipelines.
  • Tool Development: Be the expert on developer tools, being able to develop value-added tools for commercial assets and to strengthen commercial cybersecurity.
  • Operational Handover: Work closely with nearshore DevOps colleagues to hand over the operations to them.

3. Senior DevOps Manager Responsibilities

  • Team Management: Manage the DevOps team as part of the larger Engineering group.
  • Infrastructure Oversight: Manage a team of people and be responsible for operating and deploying all infrastructure/platforms worldwide.
  • Operationalization: Work with Engineering on the operationalization and deployability of infrastructure and platform components.
  • Operational Efficiency: Particularly drive towards simpler and more seamless operation and deployment of those components.
  • Security Compliance: Work with the CISO and CTO to achieve and maintain a security system meeting ISO 27001 processes and procedures.
  • 24x7 Support: Manage the team to support outages and issues on a 24x7 basis where they occur.
  • IT Support Management: Manage the team to work with the VP of Operations to support IT tickets related to the infrastructure, such as VPN tickets and credentials for development access.
  • Cost Efficiency: Work towards DevOps systems and tools improvements to reduce operational production costs, manage scaling/capacity, and improve efficiencies.
  • Big Data Support: Work with the data science team to support and operationalize big data cold storage systems.

4. DevOps Manager Accountabilities

  • Coordination: Coordinates the Development and Operations duties within the Enterprise Application space.
  • Process Management: Manages processes and resources delivering the Development and Operations duties within the Enterprise Application space.
  • Team Oversight: Responsible for overseeing the respective DevOps Leads and/or Solution Architects, ensuring the coordination of this team in overall planning activities, service delivery, and issue resolution.
  • Service Alignment: Ensures that all supporting components of the service, including any associated SLAs, OLAs, and UCs, are aligned and managed as integrated delivery and operations.
  • Continuous Improvement: Responsible for the overall continuous improvement, cost reduction, and performance of the services.
  • Supplier Management: Collaborates with Sourcing on supplier management and establishes/reviews/approves key contracts with external service providers.
  • Team Building: Builds and maintains a high-performing engineering team.
  • Mentorship: Mentors, counsels, and supports individuals in their career growth, primarily through one-on-ones and developing healthy relationships.
  • Process Design: Designs, implements, and introduces processes and practices required to keep an engineering organization running efficiently.
  • Stakeholder Engagement: Develops and maintains collaborative relationships with project stakeholders across many different disciplines to ensure projects are delivered on time, within budget, and meet quality standards.
  • System Reliability: Ensures that systems and processes that support the development department have high availability.

5. DevOps Manager Functions

  • Infrastructure Management: Design, develop, and run operations of infrastructure services in the cloud environment.
  • Cloud Provisioning: Manage cloud infrastructure provisioning, cost, and planning.
  • Technology Management: Manage Application Infra, Database, and other Cloud Technologies.
  • Process Management: Manage daily processes including Change Management, Incident Management, and Configuration Management.
  • Strategic Development: Drive the strategy to evolve and modernize existing tools and processes to ensure secure and scalable operations.
  • Security Collaboration: Work with McAfee teams to define, build, and maintain a secure landing zone.
  • Service Monitoring: Prepare, manage, monitor, and report production service uptime and reliability.
  • Patch Management: Manage the deployment of patches and product enhancements to environments.
  • Troubleshooting: Troubleshoot, analyze performance issues and customer-reported incidents, and work to restore services within the service level agreement.
  • Incident Reporting: Prepare RCA incident reports for internal and external customers.
  • Process Documentation: Develop and document processes/runbooks for cloud operations.
  • SDLC Interaction: Manage the interaction with development teams during the SDLC to represent the cloud ops needs.
  • Tool Recommendations: Work with the engineering teams in recommending the right tools and solutions for the problem.
  • Compliance Assurance: Work with product engineering teams to ensure product features and patches comply with cloud deployment standards.
  • Team Leadership: Lead and mentor a team of Operations Engineers.