DevOps is often framed as a tooling challenge, but sustainable delivery depends on the behaviours shaped by product leadership. Drawing on experience leading Reddit Search through rapid growth and building health tech products at nonprofit Taimaka, this talk explores how everyday product decisions influence DevOps culture in practice. We’ll examine how roadmaps, launch rituals, and incident response habits reinforced cross-functional collaboration, and shared ownership, enabling teams to balance speed, experimentation, and ethical development as systems grow, especially in the era of AI.