Select your current position

Pick a role and level — we'll show the growth path, skills and gap analysis.

Development path

Junior

0-2 years

Current

Responsibility: Building self-service tools. Writing Terraform modules. Setting up templates for new services. Documenting the platform.

Key skills:

Ansible Need
ArgoCD Need
AWS Need
Blue/Green Deployment Need
Canary Deployment Need
CDN & Edge Computing Need
Crossplane Need
Docker Need
Envoy Proxy Need
Feature Flags Need
GitHub Actions / GitLab CI Need
GitLab CI/CD Advanced Need
GitOps Practices Need
Google Cloud Platform Need
Helm Need
Istio Service Mesh Need
Kubernetes Advanced Need
Kubernetes Core Need
Progressive Delivery Need
Pulumi Need
Serverless Containers Need
Serverless Functions Need
Terraform Need
Load Balancing Need
Network Fundamentals Need
Container Security Scanning Need

Middle

2-5 years

Next

Responsibility: Designing self-service infrastructure. Building Internal Developer Portal (Backstage). CI/CD templates. Golden paths for developers.

Key skills:

Ansible Need
ArgoCD Need
AWS Need
Blue/Green Deployment Need
Canary Deployment Need
CDN & Edge Computing Need
Chaos Engineering Need
Crossplane Need
Docker Need
Envoy Proxy Need
Feature Flags Need
GitHub Actions / GitLab CI Need
GitLab CI/CD Advanced Need
GitOps Practices Need
Google Cloud Platform Need
Helm Need
Istio Service Mesh Need
Kubernetes Advanced Need
Kubernetes Core Need
Progressive Delivery Need
Pulumi Need
Serverless Containers Need
Serverless Functions Need
Terraform Need
Load Balancing Need
Network Fundamentals Need
Container Security Scanning Need

Senior

5-8 years

Responsibility: IDP architecture. Kubernetes operators. Service catalog. Developer experience metrics. Compliance automation.

Key skills:

Ansible Need
ArgoCD Need
AWS Need
Blue/Green Deployment Need
Canary Deployment Need
Capacity Planning Need
CDN & Edge Computing Need
Chaos Engineering Need
Code Review Need
Crossplane Need
Disaster Recovery Design Need
Docker Need
ELK Stack Need
Envoy Proxy Need
Feature Flags Need
Git Advanced Need
GitHub Actions / GitLab CI Need
GitHub Copilot Need
GitLab CI/CD Advanced Need
GitOps Practices Need
Google Cloud Platform Need
Grafana Loki Need
Helm Need
High Load Architecture Need
Istio Service Mesh Need
Kubernetes Advanced Need
Kubernetes Core Need
OpenTelemetry Need
Progressive Delivery Need
Prometheus & Grafana Need
Pulumi Need
Secrets Management Need
Serverless Containers Need
Serverless Functions Need
SLI / SLO / SLA Need
Terraform Need
Algorithms & Complexity Need
Load Balancing Need
Custom Business Metrics Need
Code Quality & Refactoring Need
System Design Fundamentals Need
Network Fundamentals Need
Design Patterns Need
Container Security Scanning Need
Structured Logging Need
Data Structures Need
On-Call Management Need

Lead / Staff

7-12 years

Responsibility: Platform strategy. Product management for internal platform. Coordination with SRE, Security, Development. Roadmap.

Key skills:

Ansible Need
ArgoCD Need
AWS Need
Blue/Green Deployment Need
Canary Deployment Need
Capacity Planning Need
CDN & Edge Computing Need
Chaos Engineering Need
Code Review Need
Crossplane Need
Disaster Recovery Design Need
Docker Need
ELK Stack Need
Envoy Proxy Need
Feature Flags Need
Git Advanced Need
GitHub Actions / GitLab CI Need
GitHub Copilot Need
GitLab CI/CD Advanced Need
GitOps Practices Need
Google Cloud Platform Need
Grafana Loki Need
Helm Need
High Load Architecture Need
Istio Service Mesh Need
Kubernetes Advanced Need
Kubernetes Core Need
OpenTelemetry Need
Progressive Delivery Need
Prometheus & Grafana Need
Pulumi Need
Secrets Management Need
Serverless Containers Need
Serverless Functions Need
SLI / SLO / SLA Need
Terraform Need
Algorithms & Complexity Need
Load Balancing Need
Custom Business Metrics Need
Code Quality & Refactoring Need
System Design Fundamentals Need
Network Fundamentals Need
Design Patterns Need
Container Security Scanning Need
Structured Logging Need
Data Structures Need
On-Call Management Need

Principal

10+ years

Responsibility: Enterprise platform vision. Platform as a Product. Multi-team platform strategy. Industry thought leadership.

Key skills:

Ansible Need
ArgoCD Need
AWS Need
Blue/Green Deployment Need
Canary Deployment Need
Capacity Planning Need
CDN & Edge Computing Need
Code Review Need
Crossplane Need
Disaster Recovery Design Need
Docker Need
ELK Stack Need
Envoy Proxy Need
Feature Flags Need
Git Advanced Need
GitHub Actions / GitLab CI Need
GitHub Copilot Need
GitLab CI/CD Advanced Need
Google Cloud Platform Need
Grafana Loki Need
Helm Need
High Load Architecture Need
Istio Service Mesh Need
Kubernetes Advanced Need
Kubernetes Core Need
OpenTelemetry Need
Progressive Delivery Need
Prometheus & Grafana Need
Pulumi Need
Secrets Management Need
Serverless Containers Need
Serverless Functions Need
SLI / SLO / SLA Need
Terraform Need
Algorithms & Complexity Need
Load Balancing Need
Custom Business Metrics Need
Code Quality & Refactoring Need
System Design Fundamentals Need
Network Fundamentals Need
Design Patterns Need
Container Security Scanning Need
Structured Logging Need
Data Structures Need
On-Call Management Need

Gap analysis: skills to develop

To reach the next level you'll need to develop:

Ansible

Independently writes Ansible playbooks and roles for platform infrastructure provisioning including Kubernetes cluster bootstrapping, certificate management, and observability stack deployment. Implements reusable platform automation modules with dynamic inventories, vault-encrypted secrets, and environment-specific variable hierarchies. Structures platform automation as self-service roles enabling development teams to provision standardized infrastructure components.

ArgoCD

Independently configures ArgoCD as the deployment engine for the internal developer platform. Writes ApplicationSets with matrix and merge generators for multi-cluster platform service delivery. Implements ArgoCD project isolation, sync windows for change management, and webhook integrations for platform CI/CD orchestration.

AWS

Manages platform AWS infrastructure: EKS, RDS, ElastiCache, SQS/SNS. Configures AWS Organizations and multi-account strategy for environment isolation. Uses AWS Config and CloudTrail for compliance. Optimizes costs through Reserved Instances and Savings Plans.

Blue/Green Deployment

Configures blue-green deployment for platform services: DNS-based or load balancer switching. Automates smoke tests between switches. Manages databases during blue-green (backward compatible migrations). Creates runbooks for blue-green procedures.

Canary Deployment

Configures canary deployment through Argo Rollouts: AnalysisTemplate, traffic management via Istio/NGINX. Defines canary metrics (error rate, latency p99, saturation). Automates promotion/rollback based on analysis runs. Creates canary templates for platform teams.

CDN & Edge Computing

Manages platform CDN infrastructure: cache policies, origin failover, WAF rules. Configures edge functions (CloudFront Functions, Cloudflare Workers) for routing and A/B testing. Optimizes TTFB and cache hit ratio for platform services.

Chaos Engineering

Integrates chaos engineering into the platform: installs and configures Chaos Mesh/Litmus as platform service, creates experiment templates for developer self-service. Ensures isolation: chaos experiments don't escape target namespace.

Crossplane

Independently configures and manages Crossplane. Writes IaC for typical tasks. Understands networking and security basics.

Docker

Optimizes Docker images for platform services: minimal base images (distroless, Alpine), security scanning in CI. Configures private registries (Harbor, ECR) with retention and rotation policies. Creates standardized base images for development teams as part of the golden path.

Envoy Proxy

Independently configures and manages Envoy Proxy. Writes IaC for typical tasks. Understands networking and security basics.

Feature Flags

Integrates feature flag system into the platform: SDK configuration for microservices, server-side evaluation. Configures segmentation and A/B testing. Creates standard flag usage patterns for teams. Implements observability for feature flag impact analysis.

GitHub Actions / GitLab CI

Develops reusable workflows for standardizing CI/CD on the platform: composite actions, workflow dispatch. Configures self-hosted runners for private infrastructure. Optimizes CI time through dependency caching and parallel jobs. Creates custom actions.

GitLab CI/CD Advanced

Creates templated CI/CD pipelines (include/extends) for standardizing platform processes. Configures GitLab Runner fleet with autoscaling in Kubernetes. Implements parent-child pipelines for complex deployments. Uses environments and review apps for preview.

GitOps Practices

Builds GitOps platform: configures ArgoCD in multi-tenant mode with per-team RBAC, creates ApplicationSets for automated onboarding, implements template repositories for standardized deployment configs. Configures notification system for sync failures.

Google Cloud Platform

Independently configures and manages Google Cloud Platform. Writes IaC for typical tasks. Understands networking and security basics.

Helm

Creates custom Helm charts for platform services with templating (helpers, named templates). Configures Helmfile for declarative management of multiple releases. Uses OCI-based registry for chart storage. Implements hooks and tests for deployment validation.

Istio Service Mesh

Independently configures and manages Istio Service Mesh. Writes IaC for typical tasks. Understands networking and security basics.

Kubernetes Advanced

Creates Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) for automating platform processes. Configures Pod Security Standards and Network Policies for multi-tenant clusters. Manages stateful applications through operators (etcd, PostgreSQL). Optimizes scheduler and affinity rules.

Kubernetes Core

Manages production workloads on the platform: HPA, PDB, topology spread constraints. Configures persistent storage through StorageClass and PVC. Works with ServiceAccount and RBAC for service authentication. Configures resource requests/limits with QoS class awareness.

Progressive Delivery

Independently creates and maintains Progressive Delivery pipelines. Configures CI/CD pipelines. Automates routine operations.

Pulumi

Independently configures and manages Pulumi. Writes IaC for typical tasks. Understands networking and security basics.

Serverless Containers

Independently configures and manages Serverless Containers. Writes IaC for typical tasks. Understands networking and security basics.

Serverless Functions

Develops serverless platform components: event-driven processing of infrastructure events, custom resource handlers for CloudFormation/CDK. Optimizes cold starts through provisioned concurrency. Configures observability for serverless (X-Ray, structured logging).

Terraform

Creates Terraform modules for standardized provisioning of platform infrastructure: EKS clusters, network topology, IAM roles. Configures remote state (S3 + DynamoDB) and workspaces. Implements pre-commit hooks (tflint, tfsec) and automated plan in PRs.

Load Balancing

Designs load balancing for the platform: weighted routing for canary, path-based routing for multi-service. Configures global load balancing (Route53, Global Accelerator). Optimizes connection draining and idle timeout. Implements WAF at load balancer level for platform protection.

Network Fundamentals

Designs network topology for platform services: VPC peering, Transit Gateway, DNS zones. Configures Kubernetes network policies (Calico, Cilium) for tenant isolation. Implements mTLS between services. Optimizes latency through topology-aware routing.

Container Security Scanning

Integrates security scanning into the platform CI/CD pipeline: automated Trivy/Snyk on every PR. Configures deployment blocking policies for critical CVEs. Manages allow-lists for known false positives and creates vulnerability triage process for platform components.