A Devsecops Engineer is a professional who plays a crucial role in the development, security, and operations of software applications. This relatively new role combines the principles of development (Dev), security (Sec), and operations (Ops) to ensure that software is built securely, deployed efficiently, and maintained effectively throughout its lifecycle. In this blog post, we will describe the primary responsibilities and the most in-demand hard and soft skills for Devsecops Engineers.

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Main Responsibilities of a Devsecops Engineer

The following list describes the typical responsibilities of a Devsecops Engineer:

Acquire

Acquire knowledge of the DevSecOps culture, principles, and best practices.

Advocate

Advocate for security as a subject matter expert across multiple organizational structures.

Analyze

Analyze and design all aspects of AWS environments and topologies.

Anticipate

• Anticipate, identify, track, and resolve technical issues and risks affecting delivery.

• Anticipate resource needs based on project schedules and expected throughput.

Assist in

• Assist in hardening security best practices.

• Assist product management with the prioritization of critical security-related activities.

Automate

• Automate and insure smooth deployments in production, and help work towards continuous delivery.

• Automate and Provide Service Analytics via Service Dashboards.

• Automate monitoring and patching of production software.

• Automate security testing processes and tools.

Build

• Build and implement a continuous integration and continuous deployment platform.

• Build and maintain tools to automate security analysis.

• Build, maintain, and make available security tooling for developers with an API first approach.

• Build pipelines and secure.

• Build tools and automation scripts that enable developers to easily consume security services.

Collaborate with

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to address security concerns.

• Collaborate with developers to support and troubleshoot applications.

• Collaborate with development teams to integrate security practices into the software development lifecycle.

• Collaborate with operations teams to ensure secure deployment and maintenance of software.

• Collaborate with software and DevOps engineers to expand and improve our security practices.

• Collaborate with stakeholders to prioritize security initiatives.

Communicate

Communicate best practices and tools through documentation and design reviews.

Conduct

• Conduct internal and external vulnerability testing using leading industry tools.

• Conduct investigations of vulnerability reports, triage, and reproducing issues.

• Conduct security audits and assessments.

• Conduct security awareness training for employees.

• Conduct security training and awareness programs for the development team.

• Conduct vulnerability assessments and penetration testing.

Configure

• Configure and manage security tools, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems.

• Configure and troubleshoot cloud, hybrid, virtual, and physical hardware and software systems.

• Configure hardware, peripherals, and services, manage configuration and storage.

• Configure, manage and integrate logging to EFK Stacks (ElasticSearch, Fluentd, Kibana).

• Configure visualizations and dashboards.

Confirm

Confirm project teams comply with regulatory compliance and best practices.

Consider

Consider the organization's entire CICD infrastructure when making changes and improvements.

Contribute to

• Contribute to balancing cost, resources, and business priorities.

• Contribute to git repositories and help with code review and approval.

• Contribute to security and compliance automation projects.

Coordinate

Coordinate any necessary fixes both with the operations and engineering teams.

Create

• Create a maintain the Deployment Pipelines following the best CI / CD practices.

• Create and continuously update documentation.

• Create and maintain business-critical infrastructure-as-code.

• Create and manage Dashboards in Datadog.

Debug

Debug complicated distributing computing challenges.

Define

Define the strategy to implement the cloud independent K8 solution.

Deploy

Deploy native cloud applications and monitor and support the Kubernetes environment.

Design

• Design and implement secure CI / CD solutions for development and production environments.

• Design and implement secure development processes.

• Design and implement solutions to take advantage of Kubernetes clusters.

• Design the security strategy of our company.

• Design your DevSecOps CI / CD and Kubernetes pipeline.

Develop

• Develop and document systems administration standard operating procedures.

• Develop and implement automated asset inventory and management systems.

• Develop and implement automated code audits to identify security issues and compliance violations.

• Develop and maintain documentation and wiki for network and security processes / procedures.

• Develop and maintain security policies and procedures.

• Develop communication skills essential to working in a globally diverse workplace.

• Develop project and design documentation.

• Develop security and compliance capabilities in support of DevOps processes.

• Develop, test, and document DevSecOps Automation using scripting tools.

Drive

• Drive adoption of security best practices and embedded cloud security controls as part of the SDLC.

• Drive security initiatives and backlog execution in conjunction with a central security team.

Employ

Employ infrastructure as code paradigm to increase automation, scalability, and reliability.

Ensure

• Ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.

• Ensure data protection and privacy practices are followed.

• Ensure system availability, functionality, integrity, and efficiency.

• Ensure that solutions are engineered with operational efficiency and security in mind.

• Ensure the design and implementation of systems meet requirements for security.

Evaluate

• Evaluate, architect, implement, and support security-focused tools and services.

• Evaluate security tooling implementation.

Focus on

• Focus on fostering personal and professional growth.

• Focus on security for a variety of cloud platforms.

Foster

• Foster and evangelize DevOps culture and product ownership amongst engineering teams.

• Foster a shift-left security focused culture across the development, devops and testing teams.

Generate

Generate collect and distribute regular status reports.

Guide

• Guide and develop a security focused mindset in the organization.

• Guide teams in designing, building, testing and deploying changes to existing software.

Help

• Help define and implement incident response management strategy.

• Help integrate application security testing into our CI / CD pipeline.

• Help maintain updated Secure Coding Best Practices and Kubernetes Security Standards.

Identify

• Identify and assess all threat vectors impacting our virtualized and cloud native platforms.

• Identify and develop tools to aid this process.

• Identify, design, and estimate automation process opportunities.

• Identify issues, blockers, and implement effective solution.

• Identify new opportunities for automation or process improvements.

• Identify processes and capabilities that can be streamlined and automated.

• Identify repetitive manual tasks that could be automated.

Implement

• Implement and maintain secure infrastructure configurations.

• Implement AWS security, performance, and monitoring solutions, including automated responses.

• Implement continuous build, integration, testing and deployment solutions.

• Implement continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.

• Implement identity and access management controls.

• Implement in-depth cloud infrastructure security to cover both the control and service planes.

• Implement new security tools and systems based on InfoSec policies.

• Implement preventative mechanisms to identify and reduce security risks within DevOps.

• Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) , policy creation and enforcement.

• Implement secure coding practices and guidelines.

• Implement secure configuration management practices.

• Implement secure software development frameworks.

• Implement security best practices and configuration management.

• Implement security monitoring and alerting systems.

• Implement security procedures and tools.

• Implement security tools across a variety of codebases and languages to automate processes.

• Implement Single-Sign-On (SSO) solutions with MFA, SAML, and iDP integration.

Improve

• Improve and drive application security monitoring.

• Improve on the tools already built into the CI / CD pipeline.

• Improve the accessibility of security through automation, CI / CD pipelines, and other means.

Incorporate

Incorporate best practices to increase the quality & velocity of deployments.

Integrate

• Integrate new services into the container ecosystem.

• Integrate security tools and practice within the DevOps process.

• Integrate security tools issue tracking with Jira.

Keep

• Keep our system safe applying the best practices.

• Keep up to date with the latest and greatest best practices in security.

Lead

• Lead a team of DevSecOps engineers as they develop and iterate upon existing container environments.

• Lead the security strategy governing the cloud-based platform infrastructure.

Learn

Learn and adapt emerging technologies to real problems.

Maintain

• Maintain program's CICD pipeline.

• Maintain regular contact with customers.

• Maintain, validate, and communicate the products' threat model, security properties, and trust model.

Make

Make a difference in the lives of thousands of students as they explore educational opportunities.

Manage

• Manage container ingress and egress configurations.

• Manage the installation and integration of system fixes, updates, and enhancements.

Mentor

• Mentor and develop leaders within the organization by helping them develop their own skills.

• Mentor engineers to build security into everyday development practices.

Migrate

Migrate and deploy various customer datasets to AWS.

Monitor

• Monitor and analyze application logs for security-related events.

• Monitor and enforce security policies and controls.

• Monitor and respond to security incidents.

• Monitor open tickets and track them to closure.

Optimize

Optimize cost and use of our AWS account.

Organize

Organize educational initiatives and materials.

Pair

Pair with internal customers with a goal of establishing DevSecOps pipelines.

Participate

• Participate in 24 / 7 on-call rotation for incident response and escalations.

• Participate in on-call for escalated support of production customer and systems.

• Participate in security audits on cloud infrastructure environments.

• Participate in security incident response and investigation.

• Participate in the analysis, design, and development of new Digital Services.

• Participate in the analysis, design, and development of new Services.

Perform

• Perform code reviews to identify security flaws and recommend improvements.

• Perform deep-level troubleshooting of cloud services, various tools, and applications.

• Perform security testing on applications and infrastructure.

• Perform source code reviews of our projects.

• Perform technology watch related to industry trends, best practices, and competition.

• Perform threat modeling and risk assessments.

Present

Present assessment reports to clearly document security findings with reasonable methods to secure.

Provide

• Provide 24x7 on-call support on a rotational basis.

• Provide and give feedback on everything we do with transparency.

• Provide cloud native security oversight to ClauseMatch.

• Provide excellent customer service and feedback to the customer.

• Provide expertise and guidance to the team as they engineer new container services.

• Provide guidance and mentoring to junior level engineers.

• Provide individual engineers with technical leadership and help group members develop new skills.

• Provide technical leadership and direction in the DevSecOps domain.

Recommend

Recommend and deploy enhancements.

Release

Release cycles, CI / CD, Code check-in and review.

Report

Report and escalate urgent threats / issues the Engineering leadership.

Resolve

Resolve significant hardware / software interface and interoperability issues.

Respond to

Respond to customer requests promptly.

Review

• Review services as the scrum team prepares to migrate them from the mainframe.

• Review source code for security vulnerabilities.

Secure

Secure our deployments from internal and external threats.

Stay updated with

• Stay current with related technology and practices.

• Stay updated with the latest security threats and vulnerabilities.

Support

• Support application deployment to container services.

• Support business development team in the production of winning proposals.

• Support knowledge sharing within the team and across ISG and IT departments.

• Support multiple agile teams across various platforms, environments, and instances.

• Support security best practices implementations and configuration management.

• Support system architecture design and implementation efforts.

Sustain

Sustain existing container orchestration systems.

Take

Take on complex projects in an innovative, start-up-like environment.

Track

Track deployment tasks and projects and drive to completion in ITSM.

Understand

• Understand and apply Scrum rules and principles in every task.

• Understand and apply Scrum rules and principles in every tasks.

• Understand complex business problems and develop solutions using Secure SDLC methodologies.

• Understand Infrastructure as Code concepts and purposes, even better if it's with Terraform.

• Understand tenets of application security, secure code architecture and development practices.

Update

Update and maintain our infrastructure as a code.

Use

Use cloud-based security tools to help improve security across the company.

Work with

• Work closely with Azure and Terraform, as well as tools like Chef, Puppet and Ansible.

• Work closely with engineering and product teams to drive security issues to resolution.

• Work remote for now, eventually will be onsite several times during the week.

• Work with development and client teams in production-level environments.

• Work with DevSecOps teams to improve the secure software development lifecycle.

• Work with Stingray development teams to add security to their delivery pipelines.

• Work with teams to find innovative solutions and deliver value and increased security.

• Work with the business team to ensure that all regulatory controls are met.

• Work with the VP of Security, IT and other R&D teams to implement security best practices.

• Work with vendors to integrate state of the art security controls into production environments.

Write

Write automation in AWS for event logging and monitoring.

Most In-demand Hard Skills

The following list describes the most required technical skills of a Devsecops Engineer:

1. Proficiency in scripting and programming languages such as Python, Ruby, or PowerShell.

2. Strong knowledge of cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.

3. Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform or CloudFormation.

4. Expertise in containerization technologies, including Docker and Kubernetes.

5. Knowledge of configuration management tools like Ansible or Puppet.

6. Familiarity with DevOps methodologies and practices.

7. Experience with security testing tools, such as OWASP ZAP or Burp Suite.

8. Deep understanding of network protocols and web application architectures.

9. Proficiency in using version control systems, such as Git.

10. Knowledge of secure coding practices and common vulnerabilities.

11. Understanding of encryption algorithms and cryptographic protocols.

12. Experience with security scanning tools, like Nessus or Qualys.

13. Knowledge of secure software development lifecycle (SDLC) practices.

14. Familiarity with log analysis and security information and event management (SIEM) systems.

15. Expertise in threat modeling techniques and risk assessment methodologies.

16. Understanding of secure network design and firewall configurations.

17. Proficiency in implementing secure authentication and authorization mechanisms.

18. Knowledge of security frameworks and compliance standards, such as PCI DSS or ISO 27001.

19. Experience with secure API design and implementation.

20. Familiarity with incident response and disaster recovery planning.

Most In-demand Soft Skills

The following list describes the most required soft skills of a Devsecops Engineer:

1. Strong problem-solving skills to identify security issues and propose effective solutions.

2. Excellent communication skills to collaborate with cross-functional teams and explain security concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

3. Attention to detail to ensure thorough analysis and implementation of security controls.

4. Adaptability to work in a fast-paced and constantly evolving environment.

5. Analytical thinking to assess risks and prioritize security measures.

6. Teamwork and collaboration to work effectively with development, operations, and security teams.

7. Proactive mindset to anticipate security threats and implement preventive measures.

8. Time management skills to handle multiple tasks and meet deadlines.

9. Continuous learning attitude to stay updated with the latest security trends and technologies.

10. Ethical and professional behavior to handle sensitive information and maintain confidentiality.

Conclusion

A Devsecops Engineer is responsible for integrating security practices into the software development and operations process. They possess a combination of technical expertise, security knowledge, and soft skills to ensure the secure and efficient functioning of software applications. By understanding the main responsibilities and required skills of a Devsecops Engineer, organizations can effectively build and maintain secure software systems in today's digital landscape.