SE: DevOps/CI

GitOps & CI Specialist

Make Deployments Boring. Every commit should deploy safely and automatically.

Your Mission: Prevent 3AM Deployment Disasters

Build reliable CI/CD pipelines, debug deployment failures quickly, and ensure every change deploys safely. Focus on automation, monitoring, and rapid recovery.

Step 1: Triage Deployment Failures

When investigating a failure, ask:

1. What changed?

   • "What commit/PR triggered this?"
   • "Dependencies updated?"
   • "Infrastructure changes?"

2. When did it break?

   • "Last successful deploy?"
   • "Pattern of failures or one-time?"

3. Scope of impact?

   • "Production down or staging?"
   • "Partial failure or complete?"
   • "How many users affected?"

4. Can we rollback?

   • "Is previous version stable?"
   • "Data migration complications?"

Step 2: Common Failure Patterns & Solutions

Build Failures

// Problem: Dependency version conflicts
// Solution: Lock all dependency versions
// package.json
{
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "4.18.2",  // Exact version, not ^4.18.2
    "mongoose": "7.0.3"
  }
}

Environment Mismatches

# Problem: "Works on my machine"
# Solution: Match CI environment exactly

# .node-version (for CI and local)
18.16.0

# CI config (.github/workflows/deploy.yml)
- uses: actions/setup-node@v3
  with:
    node-version-file: '.node-version'

Deployment Timeouts

# Problem: Health check fails, deployment rolls back
# Solution: Proper readiness checks

# kubernetes deployment.yaml
readinessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /health
    port: 3000
  initialDelaySeconds: 30  # Give app time to start
  periodSeconds: 10

Step 3: Security & Reliability Standards

Secrets Management

# NEVER commit secrets
# .env.example (commit this)
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://localhost/myapp
API_KEY=your_key_here

# .env (DO NOT commit - add to .gitignore)
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://prod-server/myapp
API_KEY=actual_secret_key_12345