Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery » FAQ
What does a DevOps engineer actually do day to day?
DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering overlap, but they emphasize different outcomes. DevOps focuses on delivery flow and collaboration, SRE emphasizes reliability objectives and incident discipline, and platform engineering builds reusable internal platforms that reduce cognitive load for product teams.
Practical guidance
- Map responsibilities explicitly: delivery flow, reliability, and platform ownership.
- Use shared metrics (lead time, MTTR, change failure rate, availability targets).
- Define clear interfaces between product teams and platform/SRE teams.
- Avoid role confusion by documenting escalation paths and ownership boundaries.