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devsecops specialist

title: DevSecOps Specialist — Key Responsibilities and Required Skills
salary: $ - $
categories: [Security, DevOps, Cloud]
description: A comprehensive overview of the key responsibilities, required technical skills and professional background for the role of a DevSecOps Specialist — Key Responsibilities and Required Skills.
DevSecOps Specialist role: lead secure software delivery by embedding security into CI/CD pipelines, cloud-native infrastructure, containers, IaC, and application lifecycles. Ideal for candidates with hands-on experience in cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), Kubernetes, Terraform, SAST/DAST, vulnerability management, and automation.

🎯 Role Definition

The DevSecOps Specialist is a practitioner and advisor who embeds security into software development and operations practices. This role focuses on “shifting security left” across the SDLC, automating security controls in CI/CD pipelines, securing cloud-native infrastructure (containers, Kubernetes, serverless), managing vulnerabilities, enforcing compliance (CIS, NIST, PCI, GDPR), and collaborating with engineering and product teams to enable secure, fast delivery. The DevSecOps Specialist combines hands-on engineering with security architecture, threat modeling, and operational incident response.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior DevOps Engineer with security responsibilities
  • Cloud Engineer or Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
  • Application Security Engineer or Security Analyst with automation experience

Advancement To:

  • Lead DevSecOps Engineer / Principal DevSecOps
  • Security Engineering Manager / Head of DevSecOps
  • Cloud Security Architect or Director of Cloud Security

Lateral Moves:

  • Application Security Architect
  • Cloud Architect (with security focus)
  • SRE/Platform Engineering Lead with security specialization

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design and implement security controls and automation within CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps) to enforce secure build, test, and deployment practices and to eliminate manual gating for security checks.
  • Integrate and tune static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), software composition analysis (SCA), and secret-scanning tools to provide continuous feedback to developers and prevent vulnerable code from reaching production.
  • Build and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) security posture by authoring safe Terraform, CloudFormation, and ARM templates; enforce IaC policy-as-code (OPA/Gatekeeper, Sentinel) and perform IaC scanning for misconfigurations and drift.
  • Implement container and orchestration security, including secure container image pipelines, image scanning (Clair/Trivy/Anchore), runtime protection (Falco, runtime threat detection), and secure Kubernetes configurations (RBAC, network policies, Pod Security Standards).
  • Develop automated vulnerability management workflows that triage, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities across applications, containers, and cloud resources; integrate with ticketing systems (Jira, ServiceNow) and patch management.
  • Architect secure microservice and cloud-native solutions with defenses-in-depth: secure service mesh configurations (Istio, Linkerd), mutual TLS, secrets management (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager), and least-privilege IAM policies.
  • Lead threat modeling and security reviews for features and services; produce actionable remediation guidance and work with development teams to mitigate identified threats and reduce attack surface.
  • Define and maintain security guardrails, baseline configurations, and compliance controls across AWS, Azure, and GCP environments; automate compliance checks and reporting for standards such as CIS, NIST 800-53, PCI-DSS, and SOC2.
  • Implement and maintain secrets management and key management solutions, ensuring encryption at rest/in transit, rotation policies, and secure distribution to CI/CD and runtime environments.
  • Create and maintain automated security testing pipelines that include unit-level security checks, dependency scanning, composition analysis, SAST/DAST runs, and post-deployment monitoring to ensure continuous security validation.
  • Collaborate with developers to train and enable secure coding practices, perform security champion programs, and provide developer-friendly remediation playbooks and IDE integrations to reduce vulnerabilities earlier in the lifecycle.
  • Automate security telemetry collection and integrate application, cloud, and container logs into SIEMs (Splunk, Elastic Security, Azure Sentinel) and monitoring platforms to enable detection, alerting, and incident response.
  • Develop runbooks and automation for incident response related to security events in cloud and container environments, coordinate cross-functional post-incident reviews, and drive remediation of root causes.
  • Build and operate secure deployment patterns (blue/green, canary, GitOps) while ensuring security validation gates and drift detection are part of the release process.
  • Collaborate with architecture, product, and compliance teams to evaluate third-party services, SaaS integrations, and supply chain risks; implement vendor risk controls and SBOM processes for software provenance.
  • Maintain and evolve DevSecOps toolchain selection, onboarding, and lifecycle management—balancing open source and commercial solutions to meet scale, ROI, and security posture requirements.
  • Create and maintain security-as-code libraries, reusable pipeline templates, and CI/CD modules that standardize secure practices across multiple engineering teams and projects.
  • Perform proactive red-team/blue-team style assessments or partner with security testing vendors to validate defenses, uncover gaps in detection and response, and prioritize improvements.
  • Drive metrics and KPIs for DevSecOps program effectiveness (mean time to remediate vulnerabilities, coverage of security scans, pipeline failure rates due to security checks, time-to-detection) and report to stakeholders.
  • Lead cross-functional security initiatives such as identity and access management improvements, zero-trust adoption, and encryption strategy to reduce organizational risk.
  • Conduct periodic security architecture reviews and gap analyses for new platforms, ensuring security requirements are baked into system designs and platform services.
  • Mentor junior engineers and security champions, provide trainings and brown-bags, and help scale a culture of secure engineering and continuous compliance.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc security requests from product and engineering teams by providing quick risk assessments, secure design recommendations, and remediation prioritization.
  • Contribute to the organization’s DevSecOps strategy and roadmap, identifying opportunities to automate controls and improve developer experience without compromising security.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies with platform and application teams to ensure security tasks are prioritized and planned into delivery cycles.
  • Maintain and update documentation, runbooks, and internal knowledge bases for secure pipeline templates, IaC best practices, and incident response procedures.
  • Assist in audits and external assessments by preparing evidence, automating compliance reports, and following up on remediation tasks identified in audit findings.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • CI/CD Tooling: Expert with Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps; able to design pipeline security gates, caching, and scalable runners.
  • Cloud Platforms: Hands-on experience securing AWS, Azure, and/or GCP workloads; strong knowledge of IAM, VPCs, KMS, GuardDuty, Security Center.
  • Container & Orchestration Security: Deep knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes security (RBAC, PSP/PSS, NetworkPolicies), image scanning, and runtime protection tools.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Proficient with Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM templates; experience with policy-as-code (OPA, Sentinel) and IaC scanning tools (tfsec, Checkov).
  • Application Security Tooling: Practical experience integrating SAST (e.g., SonarQube, Fortify), DAST (e.g., ZAP, Burp), and SCA (Snyk, Dependabot) into pipelines.
  • Automation & Scripting: Strong scripting skills in Python, Bash, or Go for building automation around security processes and integrations.
  • Secrets & Key Management: Experience with HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault; understanding of KMS and HSM concepts.
  • Vulnerability Management: Operational experience with vulnerability scanners, triage workflows, CVE remediation, and patch orchestration.
  • Observability & SIEM: Familiarity with centralized logging, metrics, tracing, and SIEM integration (Splunk, ELK, Datadog, Azure Sentinel) for security monitoring.
  • Container Image & Supply Chain Security: Experience with SBOMs, image signing, Notary/Cosign, and tools for supply chain integrity.
  • Network & Perimeter Security: Knowledge of network segmentation, WAFs, ingress controllers, and secure load-balancing patterns.
  • Identity & Access Management: Strong understanding of IAM models, roles, policies, federation (SAML/OIDC), and least privilege enforcement.
  • Compliance & Frameworks: Practical knowledge of CIS benchmarks, NIST, PCI-DSS, SOC2, and GDPR requirements for cloud and application environments.
  • Threat Modeling & Secure Architecture: Ability to lead threat modeling sessions, identify attack vectors, and propose pragmatic mitigations.
  • GitOps & Policy Enforcement: Experience with GitOps workflows (Argo CD, Flux) and admission controllers to enforce policies at deployment time.

Soft Skills

  • Strong communicator with ability to explain security tradeoffs to engineers, product owners, and executives.
  • Collaborative team player who partners effectively with development, QA, platform, and compliance teams.
  • Problem-solver with a pragmatic approach to balancing speed and risk; able to prioritize high-impact security work.
  • Mentorship mindset: coach developers and platform engineers on secure practices and foster security champions.
  • Detail-oriented with a bias for automation, documentation, and reproducible processes.
  • Adaptable and continuous learner—stays current with evolving cloud-native security patterns and threat landscapes.
  • Project management and stakeholder management skills to drive cross-functional security initiatives to completion.
  • Analytical thinker capable of converting security telemetry into actionable insights and KPIs.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, or related technical field; or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, or related discipline, or relevant security certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Cybersecurity / Information Security
  • Software Engineering
  • Cloud Computing / Systems Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–8+ years in DevOps, cloud engineering, or security engineering with progressive responsibility.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years hands-on experience implementing DevSecOps practices in production environments, including cloud-native architectures and container orchestration.
  • Proven track record of integrating security tooling into CI/CD pipelines, addressing software supply chain risk, and automating vulnerability remediation at scale.
  • Certifications such as CISSP, GCP/AWS/Azure Security Specialty, Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS), or relevant SRE/DevOps certifications are a plus.
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