DevOps / SRE Engineer Roadmap

The bridge between development and operations, ensuring systems run stably, efficiently, and automatically.

🧭 Overview: What are DevOps & SRE?

DevOps is a work culture and set of practices that aims to shorten the software development life cycle by automating and integrating the work of development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams.

SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) is Google's approach to system operations. SRE uses software engineering practices to automate operational tasks, ensuring system reliability and performance.

Phased Roadmap

Stage 1: Operations & Programming Fundamentals 0-6 months

Objective: Master the environment and basic tools
  • Linux Operating System: File, user, process management, basic networking. Proficiency in the command line (CLI).
  • Scripting: Write automation scripts with Bash Shell.
  • Programming Language: Choose a language like Python or Go for writing tools and automation.
  • Computer Networking: Understand TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, Load Balancing.
  • Version Control: Proficiently use Git (branching, merging, rebase).

Stage 2: Containerization & Orchestration 6-12 months

Objective: Package and orchestrate modern applications
  • Docker: Build Dockerfiles, manage images, volumes, networking.
  • Kubernetes (K8s): Understand architecture (Pods, Services, Deployments, ReplicaSets). Deploy and manage applications on K8s.
  • Package Manager: Use Helm to manage applications on Kubernetes.

Stage 3: CI/CD - Continuous Integration & Deployment 1-1.5 years

Objective: Fully automate the development process
  • CI/CD Tools: Build pipelines with Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions.
  • Process: Automate building, testing, and deploying applications to various environments (dev, staging, production).
  • Artifact Management: Use Nexus or Artifactory to store build artifacts.

Stage 4: IaC & Configuration Management1.5-2 years

Objective: Manage infrastructure as code
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Manage cloud resources with Terraform.
  • Configuration Management: Configure servers and applications with Ansible.
  • Cloud Provider: Master a major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure).

Stage 5: Monitoring, Logging & Observability 2+ years

Objective: Ensure reliability and performance (SRE Focus)
  • Monitoring: Collect metrics with Prometheus and visualize with Grafana. Set up alerting.
  • Logging: Centralize and analyze logs with the ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) or EFK.
  • Observability: Learn about Tracing (Jaeger, Zipkin) and OpenTelemetry for deeper insight into system behavior.
  • SRE Principles: Define SLIs, SLOs, SLAs. Manage Error Budgets.

🧩 Specialization Paths

DevSecOps Engineer

Integrate security into the DevOps lifecycle (SAST, DAST, Container Security).

Cloud Architect

Design complex infrastructure solutions, optimizing for cost and performance on the cloud.

Platform Engineer

Build an Internal Developer Platform to help developers work more efficiently.

Chaos Engineer

Proactively "break" the system in a controlled manner to find weaknesses and improve reliability.