DevOps Roadmap: How to become a DevOps Engineer in 2022

Today, we are here to give you a precise DevOps roadmap. So that if you’re learning on your own, you can find out what you need to learn and in what order you need to learn. It’s not a vague guide that includes everything that is possibly there in DevOps but a precise roadmap that can give you some path. So, let’s get started.

What is DevOps and What Does DevOps Engineer Do?

You might have heard things like DevOps is a mindset, it is more like a cultural thing in your company. We agree to some extent but, it’s not about the cultural activities that somebody is hiring you for DevOps.
Yes, it’s great to sound but the whole idea and a shortcut hacky definition of DevOps is people write code on the localhost it’s the DevOps engineer’s responsibility to move that code into the production and make sure it is always available to the client.

That is the gist of it and that’s what the DevOps engineer does in day-to-day life. Yes, it includes a lot of things about maintenance updates, continuous integration a lot of things but that’s the whole idea of the journey: From The Local Host to the Production Environment.

Is programming necessary for DevOps?

DevOps doesn’t require you to have too much understanding of programming. You should be able to read the code and get an overview of what this code looks like and what it’s going to do but you don’t need to write business logic that’s the job of developers, not the DevOps.
Surely if you have programming experience you are going to thrive a lot in the world of DevOps because you understand the code a lot but it’s not compulsory and you skip focusing on the programming.
Surely you cannot ignore it but you can move your focus a lot more on the tools and the skill sets that are required to become DevOps engineers.

DevOps Roadmap: Steps You need to follow to become a DevOps Engineer

Let’s go ahead and move on and understand the journey to becoming a DevOps engineer.

Step 1: Learn Linux:-

Step one to becoming a DevOps engineer is to spend a lot of time on Linux and at least we recommend at two months a dedicated two months to be on Linux. No matter what cloud infrastructure you are choosing to move your production code. We have already covered importance of linux here.

Maybe that’s the basic Linode servers or maybe that’s AWS, GCP, or Azure, one thing which is common in all the DevOps engineer skill set is Linux and the more you know about Linux the better it is. Understand the basic commands of it like how the graph works, the basic networking of it, how Disk Management works, and how the namespaces work in Linux.

Namespaces are a great Concept in Linux and somewhat inspired how containerization and Docker work. So the whole idea is the more you know your Linux the more you’re going to be performing better as a DevOps engineer. We would recommend that if you are seriously becoming a DevOps engineer don’t hesitate to install Linux onto your main machine.

Make sure to take the backup, you will be crying a lot a little bit probably a lot and it is not going to be an easy journey. Probably your videos are not going to play, and probably your drivers are not going to make sense but the fast-paced way of learning in Linux is simply to install it on the main machine and cry out every day.

The foundation of Linux is just Linux it doesn’t matter too much so if you are a fanboy of Ubuntu or maybe CentOS maybe PopOS whatever suits you just go ahead and get friendly with the Linux environment. Well if you wonder what are the reason of multiple os in linux you can click here.

Step 2: Learn Git:-

Once you feel comfortable with Linux then go ahead and move on with the git. It doesn’t matter if it is a git lab or GitHub, the git concepts are really important you’ll be dealing with them quite a lot. So having a comfortable life with a git is going to make your life a lot easier so spend some time on git.

Step 3: Learn YAML:-

After that, once you’re done with that We recommend you spend some time or probably two days with the YAML. Yes, two days are more than enough to learn and understand YAML.

YAML is more of an instructional set language it doesn’t include any programming, it’s just an instruction that eventually you will be using as a DevOps engineer.
These instructions are given to the computers. Yaml is one of the languages which we highly recommend that you master early on in your DevOps journey.

Step 4: Learn AWS:-

Alright, you have done a great start as a DevOps engineer now the life of a DevOps engineer revolves around a lot of cloud. Yes, there are dedicated Cloud engineers and DevOps engineers.

People do consider them as separate ones but the chances are high that you need to have this knowledge as well. Now pick up your favorite Cloud for us it’s going to be AWS but it’s equally the same for Azure and GCP as well.

AWS offers a lot more services and is a lot more in demand and a lot of startups use them but the demand for AWS and Azure are kind of growing at the same time and the most important part is the machines, the servers that you’re spinning up are gonna cost almost equally same on AWS and Azure.

Yes, We know there’s a difference but the point of saying that is you’ll be spinning some servers it doesn’t matter if you are borrowing these machines from Jeff Bezos or maybe Sundar Pichai you need to borrow them with someone.
The more you are comfortable with the cloud environment the more you are making your life easier.

Now, We prefer AWS on that because you can easily complete a few certifications on AWS as well during this journey and that will surely add an added Advantage to your resume and in your interview as well. It gives confidence to the person who is hiring that this guy knows his stuff, he has also proven that via some certification.

Let’s just say you have picked up AWS and now you’re quite comfortable with spinning up machines then comes up two most important Technologies which are used these days quite a lot.

Step 5: Learn Docker and Kubernetes:-

Docker is a way how you containerize your application and put that onto the servers. To make sure that these servers and these containers are always up and running. There is something that is monitoring them and making sure that these containers are available all the time.

The load on one machine is not too much you can kind of distribute your load with different containers on a different machine that is where your Kubernetes comes into the picture.

Yes, We agree the name Kubernetes sounds daunting but it makes you Cloud independent. You can spin up the same servers, same configurations, and same containers in AWS and GCP and you can move on freely. That is why people love Kubernetes so much.

Alright, you have done so much that means you are already 60 to 70 percent into the DevOps journey. Yes, it doesn’t make you a full-grade Pro DevOps engineer but we think you have gone a great start. So, only this much of the topic will make you a really good DevOps engineer but obviously, you are into the roadmap, and you want to take one step further.

Step 6: Learn Terraform and Some Other Tools:-

Now comes the Journey of learning about the tools and the terraform. The tools like ansible something like GitHub Actions, Argo CD, or maybe Circle CI. These tools are not going to take too much time because you have spent a good amount of time working up your foundation.
Probably each one is going to take a week or probably 15 days to get started; Not to master it but to have enough knowledge that you can present yourself.

Step 7: Learn Infrastructure as Code:-

After doing this much we would personally recommend you spend a lot of time with infrastructure as a code. There are a lot of tools for it something like Terraform, Pulumi, and there are more coming out every single day.

But once you understand the concept of how to write configuration in a YAML file, make it up and running, and spin up an entire infrastructure for a company with just some line of code. Then you will understand the true power of infrastructure as a code.

A Bonus Tip:-

One personal piece of advice we would like to give you at this point is if you have gone through with all those tools that we have mentioned right now the tool list never ends. There could be Prometheus and Grafana, and there could be more monitoring tools like Jenkins that will help a DevOps engineer to walk through daily life.

But don’t fall into the Tool Hell. Learning unlimited tools is not going to make you a better DevOps engineer. you’re going to become a better DevOps engineer when you’re going to understand what is the daily work of the DevOps engineer. Can I simulate that, can I go ahead and just make or take a dummy application and make it scalable onto the cloud, how can I monitor that, Can I containerize that? That is going to make you a better DevOps engineer instead of just falling into the tools hell.

Conclusion:-

Remember the best DevOps engineer is somebody who is not being noticed in the company if you are getting noticed every week in the company that means something is going down.
DevOps is kind of a role where nobody asks you where you are even if everything is running fine in the company. So, make sure you can and that kind of DevOps engineer.

We have created this blog so that you don’t get bogged down and you don’t get confused as a DevOps engineer. You get a clear precise path of how to become a DevOps engineer. What are all the tool sets and skill sets that you need to learn?

We hope you had understood the path you need to follow to become a DevOps engineer. If you have any doubts reach us out in the comment section we would be happy to answer any of the questions that you have.