Skip to content

Delivery & Platform 90 days 2-3 hours/day updated 2026-06-01

DevOps 90-Day Learning Path

Master DevOps in 90 days — CI/CD pipelines, IaC, containers, and GitOps fundamentals. Build the skills to ship software faster with fewer failures.

What DevOps means

DevOps is a cultural and technical movement that breaks down silos between software development and IT operations. It emphasizes automation, continuous feedback, and shared ownership of the entire software delivery lifecycle. Practitioners use CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and containerization to deliver value to users reliably and rapidly.

Who should follow this path

  • Software engineers moving into platform roles
  • Ops engineers adopting modern automation
  • Junior DevOps engineers building foundational skills
  • Tech leads designing delivery pipelines

Prerequisites

  • Basic Linux command-line familiarity
  • Beginner scripting in Bash or Python
  • Understanding of version control with Git
  • Familiarity with any cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure)

The 90-day plan

Daily study recommendation: 2-3 hours/day, six days a week. Consistency beats intensity — block the time in your calendar like a meeting.

Days 1–15: Foundation

  • DevOps principles and the Three Ways
  • SDLC and value stream mapping
  • Linux fundamentals for DevOps
  • Bash scripting basics
  • Git branching strategies

Outcome: Understand the DevOps philosophy and navigate a Linux environment confidently.

Days 16–30: Core concepts

  • CI/CD pipeline concepts
  • GitHub Actions workflow syntax
  • Docker image build and push
  • Container networking basics
  • Artifact management with registries

Outcome: Build and run a basic CI/CD pipeline that builds and publishes a container image.

Days 31–45: Tools and workflows

  • Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
  • AWS core services (EC2, S3, VPC, IAM)
  • Configuration management with Ansible
  • Secrets management with Vault
  • Environment parity best practices

Outcome: Provision and configure cloud infrastructure reproducibly using IaC tools.

Days 46–60: Hands-on projects

  • Kubernetes architecture and core objects
  • Helm chart authoring
  • GitOps with Argo CD
  • Blue-green and canary deployments
  • Rolling updates and rollback strategies

Outcome: Deploy and manage containerized applications on Kubernetes using GitOps workflows.

Days 61–75: Advanced practices

  • Observability: metrics, logs, and traces
  • Prometheus and Grafana setup
  • Alerting rules and runbooks
  • SLOs and error budgets introduction
  • Shift-left security with SAST and DAST

Outcome: Instrument an application for observability and define basic reliability targets.

Days 76–90: Portfolio, interview & certification prep

  • Portfolio project: end-to-end delivery pipeline
  • Interview question patterns for DevOps roles
  • CKA and Terraform Associate exam prep
  • Contributing to open-source DevOps projects
  • Writing postmortems and incident reports

Outcome: Present a production-quality DevOps portfolio and pass technical interview screens.

Weekly outcomes at a glance

PhaseOutcome
Days 1–15Understand the DevOps philosophy and navigate a Linux environment confidently.
Days 16–30Build and run a basic CI/CD pipeline that builds and publishes a container image.
Days 31–45Provision and configure cloud infrastructure reproducibly using IaC tools.
Days 46–60Deploy and manage containerized applications on Kubernetes using GitOps workflows.
Days 61–75Instrument an application for observability and define basic reliability targets.
Days 76–90Present a production-quality DevOps portfolio and pass technical interview screens.

Tools to learn

  • GitHub Actions
  • Jenkins
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Argo CD
  • HashiCorp Vault

Labs to practice

Mini projects

  • Build a fully automated CI/CD pipeline for a microservices app
  • Provision a multi-tier AWS environment with Terraform modules
  • Deploy a Kubernetes cluster with Helm and Argo CD GitOps

Interview questions to prepare

  1. Explain the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment.
  2. How do you implement zero-downtime deployments in Kubernetes?
  3. What is infrastructure drift and how do you prevent it?
  4. Describe a blameless postmortem process you have used.
  5. How would you design a secrets management strategy for a microservices architecture?
  6. What metrics would you use to measure the health of a CI/CD pipeline?
  7. Explain how you would implement shift-left security in a DevOps workflow.

Certification suggestions

  • AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional — AWS
  • HashiCorp Terraform Associate — HashiCorp
  • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) — CNCF
  • Google Professional DevOps Engineer — Google Cloud

Browse the full certification registry for exam details and official links.

Free resources

// instructor-led option

Prefer live, guided training with mentors and certification support? DevOpsSchool.com runs paid instructor-led programs that pair well with this free path.

Explore paid training on DevOpsSchool.com ↗