Road Mates EnterHow to become a DevOps Engineer, phase by phase: what you do in each one, how long it takes, and the proof that shows you're done.
5 phases1.5–3 years15 resources
Working daily in a Linux terminal, learning networking basics, Git, and writing Bash and Python scripts to automate small tasks. By the end, you can administer a server, debug common network issues, and automate routine chores.
You're done when you can show
A public Git repo of working automation scripts with READMEs.
Resources
Taking real applications, writing Dockerfiles, and deploying them to a cloud provider (e.g. AWS, GCP, Azure) by hand, then wiring up CI/CD pipelines that test and ship on every commit. You produce a live app with an automated build-and-deploy pipeline.
You're done when you can show
A live app URL plus repo showing a passing CI/CD pipeline that deploys it.
Resources
Replacing manual cloud setup with infrastructure as code (Terraform or similar) and running workloads on Kubernetes with monitoring, logging, and alerting. By the end, you can tear down and recreate a full observable environment from code.
You're done when you can show
A repo that provisions a full Kubernetes environment with monitoring from scratch.
Resources
Packaging projects into a portfolio, optionally earning a cloud or Kubernetes certification, and doing applications, system-design and troubleshooting interviews. The output is a job offer for a DevOps, SRE, or platform role, possibly via an internal move from support or development.
You're done when you can show
A signed offer letter for a DevOps, SRE, or platform engineering role.
Resources
Owning pipelines and infrastructure in a real company, joining on-call, handling incidents, and writing postmortems. You prove you can keep systems reliable and ship improvements that reduce toil or downtime.
You're done when you can show
A postmortem or internal writeup of an automation you shipped that cut toil or downtime.
Resources
Walk this road with people on it.
Track each phase, post your proofs, and get matched with people in the same phase.