Technology
How to become a DevOps Engineer
Builds and owns the pipelines, infrastructure and monitoring that get a developer's code into production and keep it running. From developer or sysadmin: every step, how long it takes, and the credential it earns.
- Time to get there
- 3–5 years
- Typical pay
- $110k–$150k
- Starting from
- Developer or sysadmin
Pay is an estimate of typical US entry-level pay for this role and varies by state, employer and shift. The timeline assumes you are starting from developer or sysadmin and includes any licence or programme legally required, not just course length.
Commonly asked for
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field, commonly asked for
- 2–3 years as a developer or systems administrator first
- Hands-on CI/CD, containers and cloud experience expected
The route
Come from development or systems
Both routes are normal; nobody starts here.
Typical titles at this level
- Software Developer
- Systems Administrator
- Site Reliability Engineer
Learn CI/CD and containers
Pipelines, Docker, then Kubernetes when the pipelines make sense.
Get fluent in Terraform
Infrastructure as code is the core discipline of the role.
Course that covers thisTerraform for the Absolute Beginners with LabsUdemy · around $19.99Own production
Monitoring, alerting and being on the pager. That is the job.
Course that covers thisAWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice ExamsUdemy · around $19.99- Browse jobs now
Destination
DevOps Engineer
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