Survey of 135+ engineers, platform leads, and CTOs reveals DevOps bottlenecks, burnout, and the rising role of AI in infrastructure

SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESS Newswire / September 16, 2025 / DuploCloud today announced the release of its inaugural AI + DevOps Report, a first-of-its-kind study exploring how engineering teams are managing infrastructure in the age of artificial intelligence.

Drawing on insights from more than 135 engineers, platform leads, and CTOs, the report uncovers a striking paradox: while DevOps was designed to accelerate software delivery, it often slows teams down. Manual processes, tool sprawl, and compliance overhead are creating drag on innovation-and fueling rising levels of engineer burnout.

Key findings include:

• DevOps remains highly manual. Nearly 30% of engineers lose a third of their week to repetitive infrastructure tasks and audits. Infrastructure as Code was supposed to be the answer, but in many cases it has become part of the problem."

• Security and compliance dominate.62% of teams ranked it their top challenge, and one in three reported audits that stretch longer than a week.

• Speed is still out of reach.58% of leaders cite faster deployment and shorter lead time to change as their top priority for 2026, yet only 29% say they can currently deploy on demand.

• AI adoption is accelerating.67% of teams increased AI investment in the past year, and nearly 80% say they are open to agent-based automation-provided platforms offer safeguards like approvals, rollback, and audit trails.

• The human toll is rising.47% of engineers report burnout tied to DevOps overload, while reliance on "tribal knowledge" continues to put scaling at risk.

The report also highlights a major shift in expectations for AI. Teams are moving beyond copilots and summaries, and increasingly want context-aware agents that can take safe, reliable action-while keeping humans in control.

"DevOps has become make-or-break for engineering organizations," said Venkat Thiruvengadam, Founder & CEO of DuploCloud. "This research confirms what we hear every day from customers: the current model is too fragmented and too manual. With the right use of AI and automation, DevOps can shift from bottleneck to business accelerator-and platforms like DuploCloud are leading that change."

The AI + DevOps Report 2026 is the first in an annual series from DuploCloud that will track how infrastructure, automation, and AI reshape the engineering landscape.

The full report, AI + DevOps: What Teams Need to Know in 2026, is available now: http://www.duplocloud.com/ebooks/state-of-devops-2026

About DuploCloud

DuploCloud is the leader in AI-powered DevOps, enabling teams to build, secure, and operate cloud infrastructure through intelligent automation and agentic AI. DuploCloud's unified platform replaces fragmented tools and manual scripts by automating provisioning, compliance, security, and operations-end to end. With real-time AI agents, teams can troubleshoot and manage infrastructure using natural language.

Founded by the original engineers behind AWS and Azure, DuploCloud empowers developer self-service, and startups and enterprises to focus on building with fewer DevOps resources and drive more revenue.

Contact Information

Kate Pietrelli
PR
kate@pathadvisors.co
760-518-2633

SOURCE: DuploCloud, Inc.