Automation and pipeline tools in DevOps jobs

Published on: 9 Jun 2023

The philosophies and processes involved in DevOps help organisations to streamline the software development cycle through dynamism and collaboration.

At its core, DevOps can only be successful when built upon the right stack of tools. The emphasis is more on the automation of development aspects, like incident detection and response or testing, to reduce the time it takes to deliver.

This kind of collaboration and automation doesn’t come about without help, though. DevOps engineers have plenty of exceptional tools at their disposal, each with its own purpose. 

These technologies help during software development, but it's easier to think about them in terms of their position in the cycle.

Automation tools
These tools support teams to streamline the development lifecycle by automating the deployment of applications to the server. The best of the bunch will provide comprehensive observability, infrastructure and application performance monitoring capabilities.

Other automation tools boast entire suites to create contained environments for both web and mobile applications. This can help you to reduce test conflicts, while the container increases portability and security.

All DevOps engineers will need to have a solid understanding of automation technologies. Some of the other benefits of using these include:

  • Faster development process
  • Continuous deployment
  • More collaboration and quicker recovery time
  • Improved operational effectiveness

Pipeline tools
The DevOps pipeline consists of all of the automated processes the development team uses to streamline the process, from compilation and construction to testing and deploying software and code.

Continuous Integration (CI) is a practice in which development teams merge code to a central repository, allowing every developer to collaborate on a single code base.

Continuous delivery (CD) is an approach that aims to speed up the process of building, testing and releasing software. 

CI and CD tools are both focused on automating stages of the pipeline to facilitate reliable and fast delivery of code, software and applications. Some of the benefits include:

  • Smaller code modifications
  • A shorter time to resolution
  • Increased release rate and test reliability
  • Lowered expenses
  • Easier updates and maintenance

Browse our full range of DevOps engineer jobs to find your next role.