Deadline integration handles both, render and publish.
For each publish it produces at least one render job (could be multiple, Nuke has multiple render jobs) and one (always) publish job.
Render jobs are waiting for presence of workfile and publish job is waiting for render job(s) to be finished.
Submission to DL from DCC produces metadata json file which is used for publishing job step, this file contains informations about published instances, expected files etc.
Here is more information about rendering/publishing in Nuke Nuke Artist Docs | AYON Docs
Here is more info about setting up DL and AYON plugin AYON / Openpype Deadline Setup
Hope this helps a bit.