# Devops Skill > DevOps Expert - Skill: `sirhamza/devops-skill` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add sirhamza/devops-skill` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/sirhamza/devops-skill/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: SirHamza (https://skillmd.com/u/sirhamza) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/sirhamza/devops-skill --- # DevOps Expert ## Overview Advanced expertise in DevOps engineering — from CI/CD pipelines and containerization to cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes orchestration, GitOps, and full-stack observability. Specialized in building reliable, scalable, and secure delivery systems. Use this skill with `/devops-skill` to get expert DevOps guidance, automation scripts, pipeline configs, infrastructure code, and best practices. --- ## 1. CI/CD Pipelines - **GitHub Actions**: workflows, reusable workflows, matrix builds, environments, OIDC auth - **GitLab CI**: stages, jobs, artifacts, cache, GitLab environments, protected branches - **Jenkins**: Declarative/Scripted pipelines, shared libraries, agents, Blue Ocean - **CircleCI**: orbs, executors, workflows, parallelism - **Bitbucket Pipelines**: steps, services, caching, deployment environments - **Azure DevOps**: YAML pipelines, stages, approvals, service connections - Pipeline patterns: build → test → lint → security scan → deploy → smoke test - Branch strategies: trunk-based, GitFlow, GitHub Flow - Rollback strategies: blue/green, canary, feature flags --- ## 2. Containerization - **Docker**: multi-stage builds, layer optimization, `.dockerignore`, non-root users - **Docker Compose**: services, networks, volumes, health checks, depends_on - **OCI / Buildah / Podman**: daemonless builds, rootless containers - Container security: image scanning (Trivy, Snyk), distroless bases, read-only filesystems - Registry management: Docker Hub, GHCR, ECR, GCR, ACR — tagging strategies, retention policies - `docker buildx` for multi-platform images (amd64, arm64) - Build caching strategies: layer cache, BuildKit cache mounts --- ## 3. Kubernetes (K8s) - Core resources: Pods, Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, CronJobs - Networking: Services (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer), Ingress, NetworkPolicy - Storage: PVC, PV, StorageClass, CSI drivers - Config & Secrets: ConfigMap, Secret, external-secrets-operator, Sealed Secrets - RBAC: Roles, ClusterRoles, ServiceAccounts, least-privilege patterns - **Helm**: charts, values, templates, hooks, chart testing - **Kustomize**: overlays, patches, bases, config transformers - Autoscaling: HPA, VPA, KEDA (event-driven) - Pod disruption budgets, affinity/anti-affinity, taints/tolerations - Cluster management: kubeadm, k3s, EKS, GKE, AKS, OpenShift --- ## 4. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) - **Terraform**: providers, modules, state (remote backend, locking), workspaces, import - **Ansible**: playbooks, roles, inventory, vault, galaxy, idempotency patterns - **Pulumi**: Python/TypeScript stacks, resource graphs, state management - **AWS CDK / CloudFormation**: stacks, nested stacks, cross-stack references - **Bicep / ARM**: Azure resource templates - IaC best practices: DRY modules, versioned providers, automated `plan` in PRs - State management: Terraform Cloud, S3 + DynamoDB locking, Atlantis --- ## 5. Cloud Platforms ### AWS - Compute: EC2, ECS (Fargate), Lambda, Batch, EKS - Storage: S3, EBS, EFS, Glacier - Networking: VPC, subnets, SGs, ALB/NLB, Route 53, CloudFront, Transit Gateway - Data: RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Redshift - IAM: roles, policies, SCPs, permission boundaries, cross-account access - Cost optimization: Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, right-sizing ### GCP - Compute: GCE, Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud Functions - Networking: VPC, Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud DNS, Cloud Armor - Data: Cloud SQL, Spanner, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Pub/Sub ### Azure - Compute: VMs, AKS, App Service, Azure Functions, Container Apps - Networking: VNet, NSG, Azure Load Balancer, Application Gateway, Front Door - Data: Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Blob Storage, Service Bus --- ## 6. Monitoring & Observability - **Prometheus**: scrape configs, PromQL, recording/alerting rules, federation - **Grafana**: dashboards, data sources, alerting, Loki for logs - **ELK Stack**: Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana — index patterns, ingest pipelines - **Datadog**: APM, logs, metrics, synthetics, monitors - **OpenTelemetry**: traces, metrics, logs — SDK instrumentation, OTLP export - **Jaeger / Zipkin**: distributed tracing, sampling strategies - SLI/SLO/SLA definition, error budgets - Alert fatigue reduction: severity levels, runbooks, escalation policies - Structured logging: JSON format, correlation IDs, log levels --- ## 7. GitOps - **ArgoCD**: Applications, AppProjects, sync policies, health checks, RBAC - **Flux CD**: Kustomization, HelmRelease, ImageUpdateAutomation, notifications - GitOps principles: declarative config, version-controlled state, automated reconciliation - Multi-environment promotion: dev → staging → prod via PRs - Secrets management in GitOps: External Secrets Operator, Vault Agent Injector --- ## 8. Security & DevSecOps - **SAST**: Semgrep, SonarQube, CodeQL, Bandit (Python), ESLint security rules - **DAST**: OWASP ZAP, Nuclei - **Container scanning**: Trivy, Snyk, Grype, Clair - **Dependency auditing**: Dependabot, Renovate, `npm audit`, `pip-audit` - **Secrets management**: HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, SOPS - Shift-left security: security gates in CI, pre-commit hooks (gitleaks, detect-secrets) - Supply chain security: SBOM generation (Syft), image signing (Cosign, Sigstore) - Network policies, pod security standards (restricted/baseline) - Compliance as code: OPA/Gatekeeper, Kyverno policies --- ## 9. Networking & Traffic Management - **Nginx**: reverse proxy, load balancing, SSL termination, rate limiting - **Traefik**: dynamic routing, Let's Encrypt, middlewares, dashboard - **HAProxy**: TCP/HTTP load balancing, ACLs, health checks - **Service Mesh**: Istio, Linkerd — mTLS, traffic splitting, circuit breaking, retries - **Cert-Manager**: ACME/Let's Encrypt, self-signed certs, cert rotation - DNS management: split-horizon, external-dns operator, Route 53 / Cloud DNS - CDN: CloudFront, Cloudflare, Fastly — cache strategies, WAF rules --- ## 10. Shell Scripting & Automation - Bash scripting: error handling (`set -euo pipefail`), functions, traps, here-docs - Python automation scripts for DevOps tasks - Makefile targets for local developer workflows - Pre-commit hooks: formatting, linting, secrets detection - Cron expressions and scheduling patterns - Webhook-based automation: GitHub webhooks, Slack bots, alertmanager receivers --- ## 11. Database Operations - Database migrations in CI/CD (Flyway, Liquibase, Alembic) - Backup strategies: automated snapshots, point-in-time recovery, cross-region replication - Connection pooling: PgBouncer, RDS Proxy, ProxySQL - Zero-downtime schema changes: expand-contract pattern - Runbooks for common DBA tasks in production --- ## 12. Release & Deployment Strategies - **Blue/Green**: two identical environments, instant cutover - **Canary**: gradual traffic shift with metrics-based auto-rollback - **Rolling**: incremental pod replacement with health checks - **Feature flags**: LaunchDarkly, Unleash, env-var-based toggles - **Semantic versioning**: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, conventional commits, automated changelogs - Release automation: GoReleaser, semantic-release, standard-version --- ## Core Competency Summary - Design and implement end-to-end CI/CD pipelines for any tech stack - Containerize applications with security-hardened Docker images - Deploy and operate Kubernetes clusters at scale - Provision cloud infrastructure with Terraform/Ansible/CDK - Implement GitOps workflows with ArgoCD or Flux - Build observability stacks (metrics, logs, traces) - Integrate DevSecOps practices throughout the delivery pipeline - Automate operational tasks with shell/Python scripts - Define and enforce SLOs with error budgets and alerting - Support multi-cloud and hybrid deployments