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// career-roadmaps

Role-based roadmaps, beginner to advanced

Each roadmap maps a real job role: the skills per phase, the tools worth learning, certifications that matter, portfolio projects that get interviews — and the mistakes that waste years.

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DevOps Engineer

Master CI/CD, infrastructure as code, containerization, and cloud platforms. A complete roadmap from Linux fundamentals to advanced GitOps workflows and multi-cloud architecture for aspiring DevOps engineers.

  1. Beginner

    Build core foundations in Linux, networking, version control, and basic scripting before touching any automation tooling.

  2. Intermediate

    Apply infrastructure as code, build production-grade CI/CD pipelines, and operate containerized workloads on Kubernetes.

  3. Advanced

    Design multi-cloud architectures, implement GitOps at scale, and lead reliability and platform engineering practices across teams.

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Kubernetes Engineer

Go deep on Kubernetes — from cluster installation and workload management to multi-cluster federation, custom operators, and production-grade platform engineering with service meshes.

  1. Beginner

    Master Kubernetes core concepts: pods, deployments, services, config maps, and basic cluster operations.

  2. Intermediate

    Operate production Kubernetes clusters with security hardening, RBAC, autoscaling, ingress, and GitOps deployment patterns.

  3. Advanced

    Build and manage multi-cluster platforms, write custom controllers and operators, and architect Kubernetes for enterprise-scale workloads.

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MLOps Engineer

Productionize machine learning models with robust training pipelines, model registries, feature stores, and deployment patterns. Bridge data science and production engineering for reliable ML systems.

  1. Beginner

    Understand ML development lifecycle, data versioning, and how to package and deploy a model beyond a Jupyter notebook.

  2. Intermediate

    Build automated training pipelines, model registries, feature stores, and implement model monitoring in production.

  3. Advanced

    Architect enterprise ML platforms, manage multi-model production fleets, and drive ML governance and responsible AI practices.

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Platform Engineer

Build internal developer platforms that reduce cognitive load and accelerate software delivery. Learn Backstage, Kubernetes platform patterns, golden paths, and self-service infrastructure design.

  1. Beginner

    Understand the platform engineering discipline, developer experience goals, and foundational infrastructure building blocks.

  2. Intermediate

    Design and build self-service platform capabilities, golden path templates, and developer portals for engineering teams.

  3. Advanced

    Lead platform product strategy, architect multi-cluster platforms at organizational scale, and drive engineering productivity programs.

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Security Engineer

Build and operate application and infrastructure security programs. Learn vulnerability management, identity and access, cloud security posture, secure SDLC integration, and incident response for security events.

  1. Beginner

    Build foundational security knowledge: networking protocols, cryptography basics, and common vulnerability classes.

  2. Intermediate

    Implement security controls across cloud infrastructure, application pipelines, and identity systems; operate a security program.

  3. Advanced

    Lead security architecture, design security programs, manage red team/blue team exercises, and drive compliance at enterprise scale.

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Site Reliability Engineer

Learn SLOs, error budgets, incident management, and reliability engineering principles. This roadmap guides you from operations fundamentals to advanced production reliability practices used at scale.

  1. Beginner

    Understand reliability concepts, on-call practices, and the foundational metrics (SLIs, SLOs, SLAs) that underpin reliability engineering.

  2. Intermediate

    Define and track SLOs in production, lead incident response, and build automation to eliminate toil.

  3. Advanced

    Architect reliability programs across engineering organizations, drive SLO culture, and lead multi-team incident management frameworks.

AIOps Engineer

Apply machine learning to IT operations: anomaly detection, intelligent alerting, root cause analysis, and automated remediation. Bridge AI/ML engineering with production infrastructure at scale.

  1. Beginner

    Understand the AIOps concept, data engineering fundamentals, and basic ML concepts applied to operational data.

  2. Intermediate

    Build ML-powered anomaly detection pipelines, intelligent alerting, and automated triage workflows for production systems.

  3. Advanced

    Architect enterprise AIOps platforms with real-time inference, automated remediation, and predictive capacity management.

Cloud Engineer

Master cloud architecture on AWS, Azure, or GCP — from networking and IAM to serverless, cost optimization, and multi-cloud governance. Build scalable, secure, and cost-efficient cloud infrastructure.

  1. Beginner

    Learn core cloud services, identity management, and foundational networking concepts on at least one major cloud provider.

  2. Intermediate

    Design highly available, fault-tolerant architectures and automate cloud resource management with IaC and cost governance.

  3. Advanced

    Architect multi-cloud and hybrid cloud solutions, implement landing zones, and drive cloud governance and cost optimization at scale.

DataOps Engineer

Apply DevOps principles to data pipelines — CI/CD for data, data quality testing, pipeline observability, and data catalog management. Build reliable, testable, and observable data infrastructure.

  1. Beginner

    Understand data engineering fundamentals, SQL, and how to build and test basic batch data pipelines.

  2. Intermediate

    Implement CI/CD for data pipelines, automated data quality testing, lineage tracking, and pipeline observability.

  3. Advanced

    Architect enterprise DataOps platforms with federated governance, data mesh principles, and real-time data product delivery.

DevSecOps Engineer

Integrate security into every stage of the software delivery lifecycle. Learn SAST, DAST, container scanning, secrets detection, and policy as code to build secure-by-default CI/CD pipelines.

  1. Beginner

    Understand the shift-left security mindset and integrate basic security checks into CI pipelines without slowing delivery.

  2. Intermediate

    Implement dynamic testing, policy as code, and secrets management across the full CI/CD pipeline and cloud infrastructure.

  3. Advanced

    Architect organization-wide DevSecOps programs, manage supply chain security, and build developer-friendly security guardrails at scale.

Engineering Manager

Transition from individual contributor to engineering leadership. Learn 1:1 management, hiring, performance coaching, technical roadmapping, OKR execution, and incident leadership for engineering teams.

  1. Beginner

    Make the IC-to-manager mindset shift, establish effective 1:1s, and understand your new accountability for people and delivery.

  2. Intermediate

    Lead hiring, manage performance, own team delivery, and develop technical strategy aligned with product and business goals.

  3. Advanced

    Lead multiple teams or a department, set technical and organizational strategy, and develop other managers.

LLMOps Engineer

Operationalize large language model applications — from prompt engineering and RAG pipelines to fine-tuning, evaluation, guardrails, and production LLM observability at scale.

  1. Beginner

    Understand LLM concepts, learn prompt engineering fundamentals, and build your first RAG application using an LLM API.

  2. Intermediate

    Build production RAG systems with retrieval optimization, implement evaluation pipelines, and deploy LLM applications with monitoring.

  3. Advanced

    Architect enterprise LLM platforms with multi-model routing, fine-tuning pipelines, cost governance, and responsible AI controls.

Observability Engineer

Build the three pillars of observability — metrics, logs, and traces — at production scale. Learn OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, distributed tracing, and how to instrument services for deep production insights.

  1. Beginner

    Understand the three pillars of observability, implement basic monitoring, and instrument a service with structured logs and metrics.

  2. Intermediate

    Instrument distributed microservices end-to-end, design SLO-driven alerting, and correlate signals across metrics, logs, and traces.

  3. Advanced

    Architect observability platforms for thousands of services, optimize signal quality, and lead adoption of observability engineering practices.

QA Automation Engineer

Build scalable test automation frameworks for web, API, and mobile applications. Learn Selenium, Playwright, API testing, performance testing, and how to integrate testing into CI/CD pipelines effectively.

  1. Beginner

    Learn software testing fundamentals, manual testing techniques, and write your first automated UI and API tests.

  2. Intermediate

    Build maintainable test frameworks with the Page Object Model, integrate tests into CI/CD, and add API and performance testing.

  3. Advanced

    Architect enterprise test platforms, implement testing governance, and lead quality strategy across engineering teams.

Release Engineer

Own the software release lifecycle from code freeze to production deployment. Master release branching strategies, feature flags, environment promotion, and release coordination for complex distributed systems.

  1. Beginner

    Understand release management fundamentals, branching strategies, and the mechanics of shipping software safely.

  2. Intermediate

    Automate release promotion pipelines, implement advanced deployment strategies, and manage complex multi-service release coordination.

  3. Advanced

    Design continuous delivery systems, implement progressive delivery at scale, and lead cross-team release engineering practices.

Frequently asked questions

How is a roadmap different from a 90-day path?

A roadmap is the long-term career map for a role — Beginner to Advanced over years. A 90-day path is the structured daily plan to get productive in one discipline fast. Use the roadmap for direction and the path for momentum.

Can I follow two roadmaps at once?

Pick one primary role roadmap. Adjacent skills overlap heavily (DevOps ↔ SRE ↔ Platform), so finishing one phase deeply transfers to the others far better than splitting your attention.

How often are roadmaps updated?

Roadmaps are reviewed by the community and updated as the ecosystem changes. Each page shows its last-updated date, and you can submit improvements from the Community page.