Integrating secrets into CI/CD and production

Integrating secrets into CI/CD and production

Once your secrets are centralized and your team is aligned, the next step is making sure those secrets stay in sync across your infrastructure. Whether you're deploying from a CI/CD pipeline, syncing to a cloud provider, or running on a managed platform, Doppler helps keep everything up to date without relying on manual steps or scattered configs.

This chapter explores how Doppler fits into your delivery workflows and helps teams move faster while staying secure.

Secrets that move with your code

Secrets often live in static config files or are manually copied before deployments. While that approach works early on, it quickly becomes risky as systems grow. Teams lost track of which values are current, which environments are aligned, and who last made a change.

Doppler solves this by acting as a central source of truth. When you update a secret in Doppler, those changes can sync automatically to the services and environments that depend on them. This helps eliminate configuration drift and makes it easier to keep staging, production, and local development aligned.

Integrations that scale with you

Doppler offers two types of integrations: native and custom.

Native integrations are configured through the Doppler dashboard and are made up of two parts: connections and syncs.

• Connections are created at the workplace level and control how Doppler authenticates with providers like AWS, GCP, or HashiCorp Vault.
• Syncs are configured at the environment level and define what secrets to sync and how they should be delivered.

This structure gives admins control over provider access while letting developers manage syncs in the context of their own projects and environments.

Custom integrations are available for teams that want more flexibility. Using Doppler’s CLI, REST API, or Terraform provider, you can script how secrets are fetched, injected, or synced across any service in your stack.

CI/CD support

Doppler supports all major CI/CD providers, including GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, and Bitbucket Pipelines. When you install the Doppler CLI in your pipeline, you can securely pull secrets at runtime and inject them directly into your deploy or build steps.

This means you no longer need to store secrets in your pipeline config or manually update them when values change. The Doppler CLI ensures your CI/CD systems always pull the latest versions of your secrets without compromising security.

A single source of truth for every environment

By treating Doppler as the system of record for secrets, teams can reduce manual work and minimize risk. Developers always know where to find the latest credentials. Pipelines don’t break due to outdated values. Production deploys no longer rely on someone who remembers to update a config file.

Integrated secrets management ensures consistency across every environment, from development through to production.

Next: Managing secrets at scale

As infrastructure and teams grow, secrets management becomes more complex. In Chapter 5, we’ll look at how Doppler helps organizations manage secrets across multiple services, automates secret rotation, and supports long-term operational and security best practices.