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DevOps Engineer Roadmap

Containers, orchestration, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and one cloud in real depth.

19 Week228 h6 projects

Three free learning paths in the order a system actually gets built. GitHub for three weeks so version control and pull requests are automatic. The DevOps and Platform Engineering path for seven weeks: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD with GitHub Actions, configuration management with Ansible, monitoring with Prometheus, and a project that containerises and deploys a real app. AWS for nine weeks, core services, architecture, cloud security, DevOps and CI/CD on AWS, and cost. By the end you can take an application and give it a repeatable deployment, a pipeline, and enough observability to know when it breaks.

This roadmap is nineteen curated weeks. At ten hours a week, expect twenty two to twenty six weeks. At twenty hours a week, thirteen to fifteen. DevOps is usually not a true entry-level role, so honest timelines assume you either come from development or support, or you pair this with the backend roadmap first. From a related background, six to ten months to a junior platform or cloud role is reasonable.

Order is load-bearing here. Containers before orchestration, because Kubernetes makes no sense until you have felt the problem it solves. Terraform after you have clicked around a cloud console enough to resent it. CI/CD once you have something worth deploying. Save deep AWS for last, because the concepts from the platform path, containers, pipelines, infrastructure as code, transfer to any cloud, and learning them cloud-agnostic first stops you from memorising one vendor's buttons. Do the containerise-and-deploy project end to end.

This suits people who would rather make the deployment boring than write the feature, who like automating a thing they had to do twice, and who are calm during incidents. It fits developers who kept ending up as the person who fixes the pipeline. It is a poor fit as a first tech job with no prior background, since DevOps assumes you already understand what an application is and how it fails, or if you dislike being on call, which is part of most platform roles.

What this roadmap covers

GitHub

3 Week

Go from your first commit to a real open-source contribution: Git and GitHub fundamentals, branches and issues, then actually open a pull request on a real project.

Start the free learning paths →

DevOps & Platform Engineering

7 Week

Learn the real DevOps toolchain: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Ansible, Prometheus, then ship one project that containerizes an app and deploys it through a CI/CD pipeline onto Kubernetes.

Start the free learning paths →

AWS

9 Week

Get AWS-certification-ready and ship two real projects: a full-stack app on EC2/RDS/S3, and a serverless app, covering core services, security, DevOps pipelines, and ML on AWS along the way.

Start the free learning paths →

The week-by-week plan

  1. Week 1: GitHub Basics

    GitHub

    Understand what GitHub is, how it fits with Git, and get comfortable with the core workflow.

    Watch

    Milestone What GitHub is and why developers use it

  2. Week 2: Branches, Issues & Collaboration

    GitHub

    Go beyond the basics: branch your work, track tasks with Issues, and understand how forking works.

    Watch

    Milestone What forking a repository means

  3. Week 3: Project: Contribute a Pull Request to a Real Open-Source Repo

    GitHub

    Put everything together: fork a real project, make a small improvement, and open your first pull request.

    Watch

    Milestone Finding a real repo and a beginner-friendly issue to work on

    Project checkpoint Put everything together: fork a real project, make a small improvement, and open your first pull request.

  4. Week 4: Containers with Docker

    DevOps & Platform Engineering

    Containers are the foundation of modern DevOps. Learn Docker end-to-end: images, containers, Dockerfiles, volumes, networking and Docker Compose, with hands-on demos.

    Watch

    Milestone What containers are and the problems they solve

  5. Week 5: Container Orchestration with Kubernetes

    DevOps & Platform Engineering

    Once you have containers, you need to run them at scale. Master Kubernetes: pods, deployments, services, ingress, config, volumes and Helm.

    Watch

    Milestone Kubernetes architecture: nodes, pods and the control plane

  6. Week 6: Infrastructure as Code with Terraform

    DevOps & Platform Engineering

    Provision and manage cloud infrastructure declaratively. Learn Terraform from providers and resources to state, variables and modules on real AWS infrastructure.

    Watch

    Milestone Providers, resources and data sources

  7. Week 7: CI/CD with GitHub Actions

    DevOps & Platform Engineering

    Automate build, test and deploy. Learn CI/CD concepts and build a real pipeline with GitHub Actions that ships a Dockerized app.

    Watch

    Milestone CI/CD fundamentals and why pipelines matter

  8. Week 8: Configuration Management with Ansible

    DevOps & Platform Engineering

    Automate server provisioning and configuration. Learn Ansible playbooks, inventories, modules and roles to manage infrastructure reproducibly.

    Watch

    Milestone How Ansible automates configuration without agents

  9. Week 9: Monitoring & Observability with Prometheus

    DevOps & Platform Engineering

    You can't operate what you can't see. Learn how Prometheus collects metrics, its architecture, and how observability underpins SRE practice.

    Watch

    Milestone Metrics-based monitoring and the pull model

    Project checkpoint Consolidation checkpoint: rebuild one thing from the last month from scratch with no tutorial open, then write down what you had to look up.

  10. Week 10: Project: Containerize, Deploy & Automate a Real App

    DevOps & Platform Engineering

    Put it all together: containerize a real application, wire up a CI/CD pipeline, and deploy it to Kubernetes. The capstone ties Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD into one working project.

    Watch

    Milestone Containerizing a multi-service application with Docker

    Project checkpoint Put it all together: containerize a real application, wire up a CI/CD pipeline, and deploy it to Kubernetes. The capstone ties Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD into one working project.

  11. Week 11: Introduction to AWS & Cloud Computing

    AWS

    Get oriented in the AWS ecosystem and cloud computing fundamentals before diving into specific services.

    Watch

    Milestone What AWS is and why companies run on it

  12. Week 12: AWS Core Services & Architecture

    AWS

    Learn how AWS's core infrastructure and networking building blocks fit together, and see the platform's full breadth.

    Watch

    Milestone VPCs, subnets, route tables and internet gateways

  13. Week 13: AWS Cloud Security

    AWS

    Learn how to secure applications and data on AWS, and the shared responsibility model that underpins it.

    Watch

    Milestone The AWS shared responsibility model

  14. Week 14: AWS DevOps & CI/CD

    AWS

    Learn how AWS's DevOps toolchain automates building, testing and deploying applications.

    Watch

    Milestone What DevOps means in an AWS context

  15. Week 15: AWS Machine Learning

    AWS

    See how AWS's managed ML services let you build intelligent applications without managing infrastructure.

    Watch

    Milestone The managed ML services AWS offers, from SageMaker to pretrained AI APIs

  16. Week 16: Advanced Networking & Cost Optimization

    AWS

    Go deeper on multi-VPC networking and learn how to keep an AWS bill under control.

    Watch

    Milestone Why Transit Gateway beats VPC peering at scale

    Project checkpoint Consolidation checkpoint: rebuild one thing from the last month from scratch with no tutorial open, then write down what you had to look up.

  17. Week 17: AWS Certification Prep

    AWS

    Prepare for AWS certification exams and learn about the certification paths available.

    Watch

    Milestone The Solutions Architect Associate exam blueprint

  18. Week 18: Project: Deploy a Full-Stack App on AWS with EC2, RDS & S3

    AWS

    Take a real full-stack app (React front end, backend API, MySQL database) and deploy it to AWS end to end using EC2, RDS and S3.

    Watch

    Milestone Provisioning an EC2 instance and configuring it for a production app

    Project checkpoint Take a real full-stack app (React front end, backend API, MySQL database) and deploy it to AWS end to end using EC2, RDS and S3.

  19. Week 19: Project: Build and Deploy a Serverless Full-Stack App

    AWS

    Build and ship a second, more advanced project: a serverless application using Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB and S3/CloudFront.

    Watch

    Milestone Designing a serverless architecture with Lambda and API Gateway

    Project checkpoint Build and ship a second, more advanced project: a serverless application using Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB and S3/CloudFront.

Resources and structure are drawn from the free Dropout Developer learning paths.

Get this as a dated plan

Run the same roadmap through the generator with your weekly hours and a target date to get a dated schedule you can copy, download, or print.

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FAQ

Can DevOps be a first job in tech?

Rarely. It assumes you already know how applications are built and how they break. Most people reach it from development, QA, or IT support. If you are starting from zero, do the backend roadmap first, then this one.

Which cloud should I learn?

This roadmap uses AWS because it has the most jobs and the deepest free material. Azure and Google Cloud share the same concepts. Learn containers, pipelines, and infrastructure as code cloud-agnostic first, then one provider in depth.

Do I need to be good at coding for DevOps?

You need to be comfortable, not expert. Scripting in Bash and Python, reading application code well enough to debug a deployment, and writing clean YAML and Terraform. You are automating other people's software more than writing your own.

What should a DevOps portfolio contain?

One repository that takes a sample app and adds a Dockerfile, a CI pipeline, infrastructure as code, and monitoring, deployed to a real cloud account. A short writeup of the architecture and what you would improve carries a lot of weight.

Is Kubernetes worth the effort for a junior?

Yes to understand, because it is in most listings and it frames how modern systems run. You will not run production clusters alone as a junior, but being able to read manifests and debug a pod is expected.

Compare with the static roadmap on roadmap.sh →