DevOps Roadmap

DevOps Roadmap #

This roadmap is designed for practical outcomes, not certification memorization.

Stage 1 — Foundations #

Skills to build #

  • Linux command line and shell fundamentals
  • Networking basics (DNS, HTTP, TLS, load balancing)
  • Git workflows and collaborative development
  • Python or Go for scripting and tooling

Milestone project #

Deploy a simple web app with a CI pipeline and basic monitoring.

Stage 2 — Delivery and Cloud #

Skills to build #

  • CI/CD pipeline design and debugging
  • Containerization with Docker
  • Cloud IAM and environment design
  • Infrastructure as Code with Terraform/OpenTofu

Milestone project #

Provision cloud infrastructure with IaC and deploy the app automatically on merge to main.

Stage 3 — Kubernetes and Reliability #

Skills to build #

  • Kubernetes workload and networking fundamentals
  • Observability: logs, metrics, traces
  • SLOs, alerting, and incident response
  • Capacity, scaling, and cost controls

Milestone project #

Run production-like workloads in Kubernetes with autoscaling, dashboards, and SLO-backed alerts.

Stage 4 — Advanced DevOps #

Skills to build #

  • GitOps and policy-as-code
  • Platform engineering and golden paths
  • DevSecOps controls across SDLC
  • Multi-region resilience and disaster recovery

Milestone project #

Build a reusable internal platform template for app teams (service template + CI/CD + deployment + observability + security checks).

Suggested study sequence #

  1. Introduction to DevOps
  2. CI/CD Tools
  3. Infrastructure as Code
  4. Containerization & Orchestration
  5. Kubernetes Deep Dive: Minikube to AKS/EKS
  6. Monitoring & Logging
  7. DevSecOps
  8. Systems Design
  9. DevOps Certifications Guide