Cloud & DevOps Career Roadmap

Navigate the filesystem using cd, pwd, and ls to inspect directories and list contents with detail flags.

Create, copy, move, and remove files and directories using touch, cp, mv, and rm with recursive and force options.

View and filter file contents using cat, less, head, tail, grep, and wc to locate configuration entries and log events.

Interpret and modify file permissions and ownership with chmod, chown, and umask to secure scripts and service accounts.

Monitor and manage running processes using ps, top, kill, and job control shortcuts to troubleshoot stuck services.

Package and extract application artifacts with tar and gzip to simulate deployment bundle preparation.

Write and execute a Bash script that automates user creation, SSH hardening, directory scaffolding, and service verification for a cloud-ready Linux host.

Initialize a local Git repository and configure user identity for commit authorship.

Stage and commit file changes with descriptive messages to record project history.

Examine commit logs and file differences to understand project evolution.

Create and switch branches to isolate feature development from the main codebase.

Merge feature branches into main and resolve conflicts that arise during integration.

Connect to a remote repository on GitHub and synchronize changes using push and pull.

Execute a complete GitHub Flow cycle: branch, commit, push, open a pull request, and merge after review.

Explain how containers isolate applications using Linux namespaces and cgroups, contrasting them with virtual machines for cloud-native deployments.

Install Docker Engine on a Linux host, configure the daemon for remote API access, and verify operation with standard test images.

Pull, inspect, tag, and remove container images using the CLI, and organize local images for efficient CI/CD pipeline integration.

Run, stop, restart, and remove containers with explicit resource constraints (CPU, memory) and publish ports for service exposure.

Write optimized Dockerfiles using multi-stage builds, layer caching strategies, and .dockerignore to produce minimal production-ready images.

Implement bind mounts and named volumes to persist database state and share configuration files across container restarts.

Build and run a multi-container application (web frontend, API backend, database) using custom images, Docker networks, and volumes for a portfolio-ready deployment.

Configure a secure AWS account with MFA, billing alerts, and the CLI to establish a safe, reproducible environment for all subsequent labs.

Create least-privilege users, groups, and roles with policies so every later service interaction follows security best practices.

Build a custom VPC with public and private subnets, an internet gateway, and route tables to isolate and control network traffic for workloads.

Launch, connect to, and manage a Linux EC2 instance using key pairs and security groups to host compute workloads.

Create versioned, encrypted S3 buckets with lifecycle rules and static-website hosting to store and serve application assets securely.

Deploy a managed PostgreSQL instance in private subnets, secured by security groups and parameter groups, for reliable relational data storage.

Integrate VPC, EC2, S3, and RDS into a working three-tier web application and validate end-to-end functionality with a live URL.

Distinguish declarative from imperative approaches and explain how state management enables reproducible cloud environments.

Execute the core init, plan, and apply cycle to provision a cloud resource using the HashiCorp Configuration Language.

Construct reusable configurations using variables, outputs, and resource arguments to parameterize infrastructure deployments.

Configure remote state storage with locking to enable team collaboration and prevent configuration drift.

Compose a versioned, parameterized module that encapsulates a standard network topology for reuse across environments.

Integrate a secrets manager to inject sensitive values into Terraform without exposing them in state or version control.

Orchestrate a multi-environment deployment using the custom network module, remote state, and secret injection in a single apply run.

Explain continuous integration and deployment concepts while creating a basic pipeline definition file.

Configure a repository webhook to trigger automated workflows on code push events.

Implement a pipeline stage that compiles application code and runs unit tests inside an isolated environment.

Write a Dockerfile and extend the pipeline to build, tag, and push a container image to a registry.

Add a deployment stage targeting a staging namespace with automated health checks and rollback on failure.

Design a manual approval gate and blue-green deployment strategy for zero-downtime production releases.

Construct a complete CI/CD pipeline integrating build, test, containerization, staging validation, and gated production deployment for a sample microservice.

Distinguish between logs, metrics, and traces to select the appropriate telemetry signal for a given troubleshooting scenario.

Deploy a Prometheus server using Docker Compose to scrape metrics from a target application endpoint.

Instrument a sample application with a Prometheus client library to expose custom business and latency metrics.

Build a Grafana dashboard using PromQL queries to visualize service health, throughput, and error rates.

Configure Prometheus alerting rules and Alertmanager routes to trigger notifications for critical service degradation.

Integrate OpenTelemetry into the sample application to generate traces and visualize request flows in Jaeger.

Deploy a unified monitoring stack (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Tempo) via Docker Compose and validate end-to-end observability for a microservice environment.

Define the capstone project scope by specifying functional requirements, infrastructure needs, and CI/CD pipeline stages for a containerized web application deployment.

Provision cloud infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) to create a VPC, Kubernetes cluster (EKS/GKE/AKS), managed database, and load balancer resources.

Build a multi-stage Dockerfile, implement automated image scanning for vulnerabilities, and configure a CI pipeline to push tagged images to a container registry on every commit.

Configure ArgoCD or Flux to synchronize Kubernetes manifests from a Git repository, establishing a GitOps workflow for continuous delivery to the provisioned cluster.

Deploy Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki stack via Helm charts; configure application instrumentation, custom dashboards, and alerting rules for latency, error rates, and saturation metrics.

Implement Canary deployments using Flagger or Argo Rollouts with automated metric analysis and rollback criteria to validate safe production releases.

Execute end-to-end validation including load testing, chaos engineering experiments (pod kills, latency injection), disaster recovery drills, and documentation of the complete deployment architecture.