Education · 1 of 4

The path

Usually a second job, not a first one. You earn it by knowing both code and servers.

1. 1

   High school

   Grades 11 and 12

   Math and computer science. Install Linux on an old laptop and learn the command line. That one habit is the start of this career.

2. 2

   Computer science degree or college diploma

   2 to 5 years

   A 4-year degree or a 2 to 3 year diploma. BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology) offers a Cloud Computing option in its diploma. Pick co-op.

3. 3

   First tech job

   1 to 3 years

   Developer, systems administrator or IT (information technology) support. You learn how software actually breaks.

4. 4

   Learn the DevOps toolset

   Alongside work

   A cloud platform (AWS, Amazon Web Services, or Azure), containers (Docker, Kubernetes), continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, infrastructure as code (Terraform). Get one or two certificates.

5. 5

   Move into DevOps

   3 to 6 years after high school

   Often inside the same company, by being the developer who fixes the deploy pipeline.