CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery or Deployment) is the automation of the path that takes a code change to production: each change is automatically built, tested, then prepared or deployed without manual handling.
Continuous integration (CI) means merging developers' work into the shared codebase very often; at each merge, a suite of automated tests checks that nothing is broken. Continuous delivery (CD) ensures that validated code is always ready to go to production in one click. Continuous deployment goes further: it ships to production automatically if all tests pass.
These steps are chained in a pipeline, configured in tools such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins or CircleCI. The benefit: frequent, small and less risky releases, instead of large, stressful quarterly deliveries.
Why it matters when hiring
Deployment frequency is one of the best indicators of a tech team's maturity, worth asking a candidate about as well as including in your own pitch. For a DevOps or Platform Engineer, ask how long the pipeline took and what they did to make it more reliable or faster. For a developer, check that they write tests and do not treat CI as another team's business.