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DevOps Engineer path

From a single Linux process to a GitOps-driven platform. This is the default path if you are not sure where to start: it follows the phases in order and skips lessons that only matter for a specialisation.

Lessons appear here as they are published. Each one is self-contained; prerequisites are listed on the lesson page and the tutor skills respect them.

DevOps Engineer · 77 lessons · 112.5 h
  1. Build The Lab: One Command That Proves Your Machine Is Ready · Phase 00 Setup & Lab · 60 min
  2. Build PID 1: Why Your Container Ignores Ctrl-C · Phase 01 Linux & Systems · 75 min
  3. Build File Descriptors: Too Many Open Files Is a Leak, Not a Limit · Phase 01 Linux & Systems · 75 min
  4. Build Every Error Message Is a System Call That Failed · Phase 01 Linux & Systems · 75 min
  5. Build Root Is a Bundle of 41 Bits: Permissions and Capabilities · Phase 01 Linux & Systems · 75 min
  6. Build A Service Is a Process With a Contract: systemd Units From Scratch · Phase 01 Linux & Systems · 90 min
  7. Build Limits Are Files: cgroup v2 by Hand · Phase 01 Linux & Systems · 75 min
  8. Build A Path Is a Lookup Through a Mount Table · Phase 01 Linux & Systems · 75 min
  9. Build USE Before You Guess: CPU, Memory, Disk and PSI From /proc · Phase 01 Linux & Systems · 90 min
  10. Build A Route Is a Longest-Prefix Match Plus a Rule Table · Phase 02 Networking · 75 min
  11. Build DNS Is a Recursive Walk Over UDP · Phase 02 Networking · 90 min
  12. Build Most Network Outages Are Timeouts You Did Not Set · Phase 02 Networking · 90 min
  13. Build tcpdump Is a Filter Over Bytes You Can Parse · Phase 02 Networking · 90 min
  14. Build TLS Is a Handshake and a Chain You Can Verify · Phase 02 Networking · 120 min
  15. Build HTTP/1.1 Is Text Over a Socket Until It Is Not · Phase 02 Networking · 90 min
  16. Build A Load Balancer Is a Health Check and a Choice · Phase 02 Networking · 90 min
  17. Build A Cache Is a Key, a Lifetime and a Validator · Phase 02 Networking · 75 min
  18. Build Git Is a Content-Addressed Object Store · Phase 03 Git & Collaboration · 90 min
  19. Build Trunk-Based Development Is a Queue of Short Branches · Phase 03 Git & Collaboration · 75 min
  20. Build Process Isolation: A Container Is Just a Process · Phase 05 Containers · 90 min
  21. Learn Images Are Just Layers · Phase 05 Containers · 45 min
  22. Build Pull an Image With Plain HTTP: Registries Are Content-Addressed · Phase 05 Containers · 75 min
  23. Build Build an Image Without a Dockerfile: Layers, Config and Manifest by Hand · Phase 05 Containers · 90 min
  24. Build A Container's Network Is a veth Pair, a Bridge and Three NAT Rules · Phase 05 Containers · 90 min
  25. Build Compose Is a Dependency Graph Over docker run · Phase 05 Containers · 90 min
  26. Build Rootless Means a User Namespace, Not Less Container · Phase 05 Containers · 60 min
  27. Build Shrink What a Compromised Process Can Do: seccomp, Capabilities, Read-Only Roots · Phase 05 Containers · 90 min
  28. Build A Controller Is a Loop That Compares: Reconcilers From Scratch · Phase 06 Orchestration · 90 min
  29. Build A Scheduler Is Filter, Score, Bind · Phase 06 Orchestration · 90 min
  30. Build A Node Agent Turns a Pod Spec Into Processes · Phase 06 Orchestration · 90 min
  31. Build A Service Is a Virtual IP and a Rewrite Rule · Phase 06 Orchestration · 90 min
  32. Build kubectl auth can-i Is a Function You Can Write · Phase 06 Orchestration · 75 min
  33. Build A Chart Is a Template Plus a Release Record · Phase 06 Orchestration · 90 min
  34. Build An Operator Is a Controller for a Type You Defined · Phase 06 Orchestration · 120 min
  35. Build Routing Is Listeners, Routes and Precedence: the Gateway API · Phase 06 Orchestration · 90 min
  36. Build Plan and Apply: A State File Is Just a Diff · Phase 07 Infrastructure as Code · 90 min
  37. Build Apply Order Is a Graph Walk · Phase 07 Infrastructure as Code · 90 min
  38. Build A Module Is a Function With a Namespace · Phase 07 Infrastructure as Code · 90 min
  39. Build Two Applies, One State: Locking Is the Product · Phase 07 Infrastructure as Code · 90 min
  40. Build Drift Is a Plan You Did Not Ask For · Phase 07 Infrastructure as Code · 75 min
  41. Build Policy Is a Function Over the Plan JSON · Phase 07 Infrastructure as Code · 90 min
  42. Build Same Engine, Different Front End: Pulumi and Crossplane · Phase 07 Infrastructure as Code · 90 min
  43. Build Idempotence Is a Check Before Every Change · Phase 07 Infrastructure as Code · 90 min
  44. Build A Pipeline Is a Graph of Jobs in Clean Rooms · Phase 08 CI/CD & GitOps · 90 min
  45. Build A Workflow Is Code That Holds Your Secrets · Phase 08 CI/CD & GitOps · 90 min
  46. Build Short-Lived Credentials: OIDC From CI to the Cloud · Phase 08 CI/CD & GitOps · 90 min
  47. Build An SBOM Is an Inventory You Can Diff · Phase 08 CI/CD & GitOps · 75 min
  48. Build Signing Is a Hash, a Key and a Public Log · Phase 08 CI/CD & GitOps · 120 min
  49. Build GitOps Is a Reconciler Whose Desired State Is a Commit · Phase 08 CI/CD & GitOps · 120 min
  50. Build A Rollout Is a Loop That Watches a Metric · Phase 08 CI/CD & GitOps · 90 min
  51. Build A Release Is a Version, a Changelog and a Tag · Phase 08 CI/CD & GitOps · 75 min
  52. Build Every AWS API Call Is a Policy Evaluation · Phase 09 Cloud Providers · 90 min
  53. Build A VPC Is Route Tables and Rules You Can Evaluate · Phase 09 Cloud Providers · 90 min
  54. Build An S3 Request Is a Signed String · Phase 09 Cloud Providers · 90 min
  55. Build A Function Is a Process the Platform Starts for You · Phase 09 Cloud Providers · 90 min
  56. Build An Auto Scaling Group Is a Reconciler With a Health Check · Phase 09 Cloud Providers · 90 min
  57. Build The Bill Is a Join Between Usage and a Price List · Phase 09 Cloud Providers · 75 min
  58. Build Secure Defaults Are Checks You Can Run · Phase 09 Cloud Providers · 90 min
  59. Build A Metric Is a Name, Labels and a Number Over Time · Phase 10 Observability & SRE · 90 min
  60. Build PromQL Is Vector Arithmetic Over Time Windows · Phase 10 Observability & SRE · 90 min
  61. Build A Trace Is a Tree Stitched Together by Context · Phase 10 Observability & SRE · 90 min
  62. Build An SLO Is an Error Budget You Spend on Purpose · Phase 10 Observability & SRE · 75 min
  63. Build An Incident Is a Timeline, a Severity and Roles · Phase 10 Observability & SRE · 75 min
  64. Build Chaos Engineering Is an Experiment With a Hypothesis · Phase 10 Observability & SRE · 90 min
  65. Build Admission Control Is a Webhook That Can Say No · Phase 11 Security & DevSecOps · 90 min
  66. Build Runtime Detection Is a Rule Engine Over System Calls · Phase 11 Security & DevSecOps · 90 min
  67. Build A NetworkPolicy Is a Default Deny You Have to Write · Phase 11 Security & DevSecOps · 90 min
  68. Build A Leaked Key Is a Pattern, Entropy and History · Phase 11 Security & DevSecOps · 75 min
  69. Build Zero Trust Is Mutual TLS With Short-Lived Identities · Phase 11 Security & DevSecOps · 120 min
  70. Build A Benchmark Is a List of Checks You Can Automate · Phase 11 Security & DevSecOps · 75 min
  71. Build An MCP Server for kubectl: Tools Are Functions With a Schema · Phase 14 AIOps & Agentic Ops · 90 min
  72. Build An Incident-Triage Agent: The Loop Decides What the Model May Touch · Phase 14 AIOps & Agentic Ops · 120 min
  73. Build AI Log Analysis Is Clustering First, Model Second · Phase 14 AIOps & Agentic Ops · 90 min
  74. Build Trace the Agent Like a Service: OpenTelemetry for LLM Calls · Phase 14 AIOps & Agentic Ops · 90 min
  75. Build Run the Agent Where It Cannot Hurt You: Sandboxes and Egress Policy · Phase 14 AIOps & Agentic Ops · 90 min
  76. Build Write Tools Done Safely: Confirm, Dry-Run, Idempotency, Blast Radius · Phase 14 AIOps & Agentic Ops · 90 min
  77. Build An Ops Agent Is Safe When the Eval Says So · Phase 14 AIOps & Agentic Ops · 120 min

Pair this path with the DevOps Engineer career page for salary bands, the certifications that matter and how to present the artifacts you ship.