DevOps Engineer / Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)

1. 1
   Master Linux and Scripting

   Linux proficiency is the non-negotiable foundation: file system navigation, process management, networking tools (curl, netstat, ss, dig), systemd service management, and bash scripting for automation. Python is equally important for more complex automation scripts. Free resources: Linux Foundation free courses, The Odin Project, OverTheWire Bandit for interactive Linux practice. Target: comfortable troubleshooting a production Linux system from the command line under pressure.

   Linux administration + bash + Python scripting
2. 2
   Learn Docker and Container Fundamentals

   Containerization with Docker is foundational to modern DevOps: Dockerfile authoring, multi-stage builds, Docker Compose for local development environments, container networking and volume management, and Docker security best practices. Docker Certified Associate ($195) provides an entry credential. Build real projects: containerize a multi-service application with Docker Compose, optimize image sizes, understand the difference between containers and VMs at the process level.

   Docker + Docker Certified Associate
3. 3
   Develop Kubernetes Orchestration Proficiency

   Kubernetes (K8s) is the dominant container orchestration platform. Core concepts: Pods, Deployments, Services, Ingress, ConfigMaps, Secrets, Persistent Volumes, Namespaces, RBAC, and Helm charts. Set up a local cluster with k3d or minikube, deploy a multi-service application, configure horizontal pod autoscaling, and practice troubleshooting failed pods. CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator, $395) is the gold-standard Kubernetes credential and is specifically required or strongly preferred in most platform/DevOps job postings.

   CKA — Certified Kubernetes Administrator
4. 4
   Build CI/CD Pipeline Expertise

   CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment) pipelines automate the process of testing, building, and deploying code. Tools: GitHub Actions (most widely adopted), GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, CircleCI. Build a complete pipeline: code push triggers automated tests, builds a Docker image, pushes to a container registry, and deploys to a Kubernetes cluster using Helm. This complete pipeline from code to production is the core deliverable of the DevOps engineer's work.

   GitHub Actions + GitLab CI/CD pipeline projects
5. 5
   Earn AWS DevOps Engineer Professional

   AWS DevOps Engineer Professional (DOP, $300 exam) validates advanced DevOps capability on AWS: CI/CD pipeline design, infrastructure as code, monitoring and logging, incident and event response, and high availability and fault tolerance patterns. This is the senior AWS DevOps credential. Prerequisite: AWS Developer Associate or SysOps Administrator Associate. Combined with CKA, this is the most effective certification combination for senior DevOps/SRE role applications.

   AWS DevOps Engineer Professional + CKA

• 9:00 AMIncident retrospective — last Friday's database connection pool exhaustion caused 8 minutes of elevated error rates. Present root cause: a misconfigured connection pool limit in the new service deployment. Action items: add connection pool metrics to the deployment checklist, create an automated pre-deployment config validation step in the GitHub Actions pipeline.
• 10:00 AMCI/CD pipeline improvement — the build pipeline takes 22 minutes end-to-end. Target: under 10 minutes. Analysis: 14 minutes in the Docker build stage. Fix: implement layer caching in GitHub Actions, split the test suite into parallel jobs, build only changed services using path filtering. After changes: 8 minutes.
• 11:30 AMKubernetes cluster upgrade — K8s 1.27 → 1.29. Run the upgrade in the staging cluster first: pre-upgrade checks, drain and upgrade control plane nodes, upgrade worker nodes in rolling fashion, validate workloads. Document procedure for production upgrade next week.
• 12:00 PMLunch — 30 minutes.
• 1:00 PMTerraform module update — the VPC module needs to support IPv6 for new compliance requirements. Update the Terraform module, write tests with Terratest, create the PR. Review with the security team for approval.
• 3:00 PMSLO review — monthly service level objective review with engineering leads. Current SLO: 99.9% success rate for the checkout API. Actual: 99.93%. Error budget remaining: 87%. One engineering team wants to do a major database migration next week — calculate error budget impact: migration risk could consume 40% of remaining budget. Recommend scheduling for next month.
• 4:30 PMOn-call handoff — brief the on-call rotation. Current open alerts: one Kafka consumer lag above threshold (acknowledged, being investigated), deployment in progress for the payment service (monitoring for latency). Pass along runbook links.

DevOps and SRE work involves building and maintaining the reliability systems that keep production infrastructure running — requiring deep systems knowledge, incident response judgment, and continuous improvement that AI tools assist but cannot replace. The +19% growth reflects genuine infrastructure scaling demand.