DevOps consulting is outside help to fix how your software gets from a developer's laptop to production and how it stays healthy once it is there. In practice that means automated builds and tests, repeatable deployments, infrastructure defined in code, monitoring that wakes the right person, backups you have actually restored, and a cloud bill that matches what you use. Most of the teams that come to us do not need a transformation program. They need someone experienced to replace the manual steps, the single server nobody dares touch and the deploy script only one developer understands.
DevOps is part of our software development work. We build and run our own products, including the AM Jarvis SaaS suite and the PHP and SQLite CMS behind this site and Boiler Decoder, so our advice comes from operating real production systems, not slide decks. We work with your developers rather than around them, and we keep everything in your accounts so you are never dependent on us.
What Our DevOps Consulting Services Include
| Service | What we do | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| DevOps audit | Review your cloud accounts, deploy process, environments, access control, backups, monitoring and costs. | A clear, prioritized list of risks and fixes before you spend on anything. |
| CI/CD pipelines | Automated build, test and deploy pipelines on GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or Bitbucket Pipelines. | Every merge is tested and deployed the same way, and anyone on the team can release. |
| Infrastructure as code | Your servers, databases, networks and permissions defined in Terraform and stored in your repository. | Environments can be rebuilt, reviewed and changed through pull requests instead of console clicks. |
| Staging and production environments | Separate environments with matching configuration and safe test data. | Changes are checked in staging before customers see them. |
| Containers | Docker images for your apps, and container hosting on a managed service where it fits. | The same build runs on a laptop, in CI and in production. |
| Kubernetes | Cluster setup and management on managed Kubernetes, only when your workload justifies it. | Scaling and self-healing for complex systems, without adopting it too early. |
| Monitoring and alerting | Uptime checks, metrics, logs and alerts routed to the right people. | You hear about problems before customers report them. |
| Backups and restore tests | Automated backups for databases and files, with scheduled test restores. | Proof that you can recover, not just a backup setting switched on. |
| Security hardening | Access review, secrets management, patching, network rules and dependency scanning. | Fewer easy openings for attackers and fewer former staff with live access. |
| Cloud cost review | Find idle resources, oversized instances, unused storage and missing commitments. | A savings list ranked by effort and impact. |
| Runbooks and handover | Written procedures for deploys, rollbacks, incidents and restores. | Your team can operate the system without us. |
What a DevOps Consultant Does in the First Two Weeks
A DevOps consultant spends the first two weeks learning how your system really works and finding the risks that matter most. That starts with reading: your repositories, pipeline files, cloud console, DNS, monitoring and any documentation. Then it moves to conversations with the developers who deploy, because the real process is often different from the documented one.
By the end of that period you should have a written picture of your current setup, a ranked list of problems (for example, no tested backups, production credentials in a shared document, a deploy that requires one person's laptop), and a proposed plan with effort estimates. A good consultant also tells you what not to do. Many small teams are pushed toward microservices or Kubernetes long before their product needs them, and the extra moving parts cost more than they save.
How Our DevOps Consulting Engagements Run
- Discovery call (day 1). We talk through your stack, team, hosting, pain points and goals, and agree what access the audit needs. Read-only access is enough at this stage.
- Audit (1 to 2 weeks). We review your cloud setup, pipelines, environments, security, backups, monitoring and costs, and deliver a written report with a prioritized fix list and a cost savings list.
- Plan (a few days). We turn the findings into a scoped plan: what we build, in what order, what your developers need to change in the application and what the fixed price or estimate is.
- Build (2 to 6 weeks for most setups). We implement pipelines, infrastructure as code, environments, monitoring and backups through pull requests your team can review. Production changes are scheduled with you and include a rollback plan.
- Handover (1 week). We walk your team through the new setup, hand over runbooks and an architecture diagram, and run a practice deploy, rollback and restore together.
- Managed DevOps (optional, monthly). We monitor, patch, test backups and handle pipeline and infrastructure changes on request, so your developers can focus on the product.
DevOps Consulting Deliverables You Keep
- Audit report with findings, risk levels, fixes and a cloud cost savings list.
- Pipeline definitions committed to your repositories (for example, GitHub Actions workflow files).
- Terraform code for your infrastructure, with state stored in your own cloud account.
- Environment configuration for staging and production, with secrets in a proper secrets manager.
- Monitoring dashboards and alert rules, with routing to your team's chat and on-call tools.
- Backup policy and restore test records, showing what was restored, when and how long it took.
- Runbooks for deploy, rollback, incident response and restore, plus an architecture diagram.
To measure progress we use the four DORA metrics, which are widely used to describe delivery performance: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate and time to restore service. We record a baseline during the audit and report against it after the build, alongside uptime, alert volume and monthly cloud cost. We do not promise specific improvements, because they depend on your codebase, tests and team habits as well as the infrastructure.
DevOps Consulting Pricing
DevOps work is priced in three ways: a fixed-price audit, a project price for CI/CD and infrastructure setup that depends on the number of applications and environments, and monthly plans for managed DevOps. The main cost drivers are the number of services and environments, whether Kubernetes is involved, how much of the current setup needs rebuilding and any compliance requirements.
Cloud hosting and tool subscriptions (AWS, GCP, Azure, GitHub, monitoring) are paid by you directly.
DevOps Audit
$1,200 one-time
One-time, paid upfront
- Review of your cloud setup, deploys and environments
- Security, backup and access control check
- Cloud cost review with savings list
- Prioritized fix plan with fixed quotes
- 60-minute review call
- Delivered in 7 business days
CI/CD and Infrastructure Setup
From $3,500 project
One-time, 50% upfront
- CI/CD pipelines on GitHub Actions, GitLab or Bitbucket
- Infrastructure as code with Terraform
- Staging and production environments
- Docker, and Kubernetes where it makes sense
- Monitoring, logging and alerts
- Runbooks and handover session
- 30 days support
Managed DevOps
$2,400 /month
Billed monthly, about 40 hours
- 24/7 uptime and alert monitoring
- Patching, backups and restore tests
- Pipeline and infrastructure changes on request
- Monthly cloud cost review
- Response within 1 hour for production outages
- Monthly report and call
- Minimum term
- 3 months, then month to month
Managed DevOps Plus
$4,500 /month
Billed monthly, about 80 hours
- Everything in Managed DevOps
- Kubernetes and multi-environment management
- Security and compliance hardening (SOC 2 ready practices)
- Quarterly disaster recovery drill
- Response within 30 minutes for production outages
- Weekly calls and a shared Slack channel
- Minimum term
- 3 months, then month to month
- Add-on
- Extra hours: $55/hour. Cloud migration project: from $4,500
All prices in USD. Need something different? Ask for a custom quote.
For larger systems or unusual hosting, ask us for a custom quote after a short call.
Cloud DevOps Consulting on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud
Our cloud DevOps consulting covers the three large public clouds, plus simpler hosts for smaller applications. We choose services that your team can understand and operate, and we avoid locking you into anything unusual.
AWS DevOps consulting
On AWS we typically work with ECS on Fargate or EC2 for containers, EKS where Kubernetes is justified, RDS and Aurora for databases, S3 and CloudFront for files and delivery, and IAM roles with least-privilege policies. Deploys from GitHub Actions use short-lived credentials through OpenID Connect rather than long-lived access keys stored as secrets. Cost reviews use Cost Explorer and the resources' own usage data.
Azure DevOps consulting
Azure DevOps consulting covers two things that share a name. Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform. Azure DevOps is Microsoft's separate suite for repositories, boards and pipelines, which can deploy to any cloud. We work with Azure Pipelines when your code already lives there, and with Azure App Service, Azure Container Apps and Azure SQL on the hosting side. If you are choosing fresh, we will explain the trade-offs between Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions for your situation.
Google Cloud and simpler hosts
On Google Cloud, Cloud Run is often the simplest way to run containers without managing servers, with Cloud SQL for databases. For smaller apps and content sites, a well-managed virtual server on DigitalOcean or Hetzner with automated deploys and backups is frequently cheaper and easier to maintain than a full cloud architecture. We say so when it is.
DevOps Tools and Platforms We Work With
| Category | Tools |
|---|---|
| CI/CD | GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Bitbucket Pipelines, Azure Pipelines |
| Infrastructure as code | Terraform, OpenTofu, Ansible for server configuration |
| Containers and orchestration | Docker, Docker Compose, Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE), Helm |
| Monitoring and logs | Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, CloudWatch, Uptime Kuma, Better Stack, or Datadog if you already use it |
| Secrets | AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Manager, Doppler, 1Password |
| Security scanning | Dependabot, Trivy, GitHub code scanning |
| Cost visibility | AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, Infracost for cost changes in pull requests |
| Web and edge | Nginx, Caddy, Cloudflare |
We do not hold vendor partnerships that push us toward one tool. The recommendation is whatever suits your team and budget, and we will use the tools you already pay for when they do the job.
DevOps Consulting for Startups and MVPs
For a startup MVP, the right DevOps setup is small and boring. You need code in Git with protected main branches, automated tests that run on every pull request, a one-click or automatic deploy to a managed platform, a staging environment, daily database backups with a tested restore, error tracking and an uptime check. That is achievable in days, not months, and it removes most of the risks that hurt early products.
What you usually do not need yet: Kubernetes, multi-region failover, a service mesh or a dedicated platform team. We design the starting setup so it can grow into those later without a rewrite, and we write down the signals that will tell you when it is time.
DevOps Automation Consulting: What to Automate First
DevOps automation consulting is mostly about order. Automating the wrong thing first wastes effort. For most teams we recommend this sequence:
- Backups and restores. Losing data is the one mistake you cannot undo.
- Build and test on every pull request. Catches broken code before it reaches anyone else.
- Deploys. A scripted, repeatable deploy with a rollback path removes the biggest source of release stress.
- Infrastructure as code. Lets you rebuild and review environments, and ends console drift.
- Monitoring and alerts. Turns outages from customer emails into alerts with context.
- Patching and dependency updates. Keeps known vulnerabilities from piling up.
DevOps Consulting Company vs Freelancer vs In-House Engineer
| Option | Good for | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| In-house DevOps engineer | Larger teams with constant infrastructure work and on-call needs. | Hard to hire and expensive for a small company. One person is a single point of failure. |
| Freelance DevOps consultant | A well-defined task, such as one pipeline or one migration. | Availability varies, and documentation and handover are often thin. |
| DevOps consulting company | Audits, foundations and ongoing managed DevOps, with process and backup coverage. | Needs a clear owner on your side to approve changes and keep context in the team. |
| Developers doing it part-time | Very early products. | DevOps work gets squeezed by feature deadlines, and risks build up quietly. |
How to Choose a DevOps Consulting Partner
Choose a DevOps consulting partner by how they work, not by the length of their tool list. Ask these questions before signing:
- Will everything you build live in our repositories and cloud accounts, under our ownership?
- Do you start with an audit and a written plan, or with a sales proposal for a large build?
- How do you make production changes, and what is the rollback plan?
- What will you not recommend for a team our size, and why?
- How will our developers learn the new setup, and what documentation do we receive?
- Who actually does the work, and how senior are they?
A partner who answers clearly and suggests the simplest setup that meets your needs is usually a better choice than one who leads with the most advanced architecture.
Common DevOps Problems We Find in Audits
- Backups that have never been restored. The backup job runs, but nobody knows whether the files are usable or how long recovery takes.
- Shared root or admin credentials. Former developers and contractors still have access to production.
- Secrets in the repository. API keys and database passwords committed to Git, sometimes years ago.
- Manual deploys. Releases depend on one person's machine and memory.
- No staging environment, or one so different from production that tests there mean little.
- Forgotten resources. Old test servers, unattached disks and oversized databases adding to the bill every month.
- Alerts nobody reads. So many noisy alerts that real problems get ignored.
Who Our DevOps Consulting Is For
A good fit
- Startups and SaaS companies with a small engineering team and no dedicated DevOps engineer.
- Agencies and product teams running several client apps on inconsistent hosting.
- Online businesses whose site or app is critical to revenue but deployed by hand.
- Teams preparing for a security review or a SOC 2 audit who need sensible practices in place first.
Probably not a fit
- Large enterprises looking for an organization-wide transformation program across hundreds of engineers.
- Companies that need a certified auditor. We help you adopt SOC 2 ready practices, but we do not issue audit reports or certifications.
- Teams that want infrastructure changed without code review or documentation.
Engineering Services Related to DevOps Consulting
DevOps work often runs alongside our other engineering services. Our cloud application development services cover new cloud-native builds, our SaaS development company page explains how we build products like AM Jarvis, and our QA testing services add the automated tests that make CI/CD pipelines trustworthy. For long-term upkeep of an existing application, see our software maintenance services.