Cloud and DevOps

Time

30–40 weeks

Before this

Foundations of computer science

Leads to

DevOps engineer, Cloud engineer, Site reliability engineer, Platform engineer

People who like making systems faster, safer and automatic.

1. Stage 1: Linux and networking for operations , 6–8 weeks

   What to learn

   • Processes and services
   • SSH and keys
   • Shell scripting
   • DNS, load balancers and firewalls
   • Reading logs

   Free resources

   • The Linux Command Line Book, William Shotts
   • The Missing Semester of Your CS Education Course, MIT
   • Computer Networks: A Systems Approach Book, Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie

   Build: Set up a Linux server, lock down SSH, and host a site on it with HTTPS.

   Move on when: You can find out why a server is slow or a site is down.

2. Stage 2: Containers , 4–6 weeks

   What to learn

   • Images and containers
   • Writing a Dockerfile
   • Volumes and networks
   • Docker Compose
   • Building apps that are easy to run anywhere

   Free resources

   • Docker getting started Docs, Docker
   • The Twelve-Factor App Book, Adam Wiggins

   Build: Package a web app and its database with Docker Compose so it starts with one command.

   Move on when: Anyone can run your app on their machine in one step.

3. Stage 3: Automation: CI/CD and infrastructure as code , 6–8 weeks

   What to learn

   • Pipelines that test and build
   • Automatic deploys
   • Terraform
   • Managing secrets
   • Rolling back safely

   Free resources

   • GitHub Actions documentation Docs, GitHub
   • Terraform tutorials Docs, HashiCorp

   Build: A pipeline that tests, builds and deploys on every push, with the infrastructure written in Terraform.

   Move on when: You can rebuild your whole setup from code.

4. Stage 4: One cloud platform, properly , 6–8 weeks

   What to learn

   • Compute and storage
   • Identity and access (IAM)
   • Virtual networks
   • Managed databases
   • Costs and budgets

   Free resources

   • AWS Skill Builder Course, Amazon Web Services
   • Microsoft Learn (Azure) Course, Microsoft
   • Google Cloud Skills Boost Course, Google Cloud

   Build: Deploy your app to one cloud with least-privilege access and a budget alert.

   Move on when: You can explain your cloud bill and who can access what.

5. Stage 5: Kubernetes and reliability , 8–10 weeks

   What to learn

   • Pods, deployments and services
   • Monitoring and alerts
   • Service level objectives
   • Incident response
   • Post-mortems

   Free resources

   • Learn Kubernetes Basics Docs, Kubernetes (CNCF)
   • Prometheus overview Docs, Prometheus (CNCF)
   • Site Reliability Engineering Book, Google

   Build: Run your app on a local Kubernetes cluster with monitoring and a dashboard for its service level objective.

   Move on when: You know when your service is unhealthy before your users do.

Certification roadmaps Back to all paths