A complete, honest roadmap for the skills DevOps engineers and site reliability engineers actually use, from Linux and networking through automation, CI/CD, containers, infrastructure as code, cloud, observability, reliability engineering, security, and AI. It runs top to bottom, foundational to advanced, so you always know what comes next. Free to read, no signup required.
How to use this: tap a step on the map to open its details, skill pills, and guidance in a side panel. Work down the spine in order; each stage assumes the ones above it. This field is learned by building and running things, so deploy real systems as you go, because the concepts only stick once you’ve operated them.
Build and run a real deployment pipeline
Nothing proves DevOps and SRE ability like a system you built, deployed, and kept running. A project that ties the pieces together is the most convincing thing you can show, because you can walk through every decision.
Take a small app, containerise it, and set up a CI/CD pipeline that tests and deploys it automatically.
Provision the infrastructure with code so the whole environment can be recreated from your repo.
Add monitoring and alerting, then break something on purpose to prove the alerts and rollback work.
Write a short runbook and a mock postmortem, since operating a system is as much a skill as building it.
Put it on GitHub with a README that explains the architecture and the reliability choices you made. Being able to explain how you’d handle an outage is exactly what these interviews probe.
Frequently asked questions
They overlap heavily. DevOps is broadly a culture and set of practices for building and running software together, breaking down the wall between development and operations. SRE (site reliability engineering) is a specific, reliability-focused way of doing that, using engineering and measurable objectives to keep services dependable. In practice the day-to-day skills overlap a lot, which is why this roadmap covers both.
Yes, more than many people expect. Modern DevOps and SRE are engineering roles built on automation, so real coding ability is a core skill, not an optional extra. The days of pure manual system administration are largely gone.
No, and you shouldn’t try to. The tools change, so learn the concepts (automation, CI/CD, containers, infrastructure as code, observability, reliability) deeply, and pick up specific tools as roles need them. Understanding why a tool exists transfers far better than memorising one product.
Any of the major ones. AWS has the largest market, but Azure and Google Cloud are widely used and share the same fundamentals. Learn one deeply enough to understand core compute, storage, networking, and identity, and the concepts transfer to the others.
It depends far more on hands-on practice than any fixed timeline. Many people move in from software engineering or system administration by adding automation, cloud, and reliability skills. Building a real pipeline and running something you deployed is what accelerates it.
No, though systems and networking fundamentals help a lot. Plenty of DevOps engineers and SREs came from operations, support, or self-taught paths. Demonstrated ability to automate, deploy, and keep systems reliable matters more than a specific qualification.
Ready to prepare for real interviews with a personalized plan?
This roadmap is the map. When you’re ready to actually get hired, Interview Ready turns it into a personalized 30-day plan built around your resume and a specific target role: real practice in the right order (Linux/networking/scripting, CI/CD and IaC, containers and Kubernetes, reliability and incident response), a guided Build-a-Project track alongside it, and progress tracking the whole way. Start free.
