Caching 1
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Uses Redis at a basic level in Terraform/Ansible. Performs simple tasks using established templates. Understands basic concepts and follows team practices.
Independently implements tasks with Redis in Terraform/Ansible. Understands internals and optimizes performance. Writes tests with Terratest/InSpec.
Designs caching strategy for DevOps platform: Redis clusters for pipeline state storage, distributed locks for deployments, automation task queues. Optimizes performance and configures automated failover.
Defines distributed caching architecture for the entire infrastructure platform. Designs multi-regional Redis solutions for GitOps state storage, cross-cluster deployment coordination. Establishes data fault tolerance and consistency standards.
CI/CD 2
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Understands .gitlab-ci.yml structure: stages, jobs, scripts, artifacts. Runs pipelines, reads logs and understands job statuses. Knows basic concepts: variables, cache, execution rules (rules/only/except).
Develops CI/CD pipelines in GitLab: multi-stage pipelines, parent-child and downstream pipelines, include templates. Configures GitLab Runners (Docker, Kubernetes executors), manages variables, environments and review apps.
Defines GitLab CI/CD standards for the organization: include template library, compliance framework, runner infrastructure standards. Designs multi-project pipeline architecture, DORA metrics for delivery effectiveness evaluation.
Develops DevOps platform strategy based on GitLab: end-to-end from SCM to production, Security integration, Package Registry, Infrastructure. Defines enterprise GitLab instance architecture with HA, geo-replication and DR plan.
Understands the fundamentals of Jenkins. Applies basic practices in daily work. Follows recommendations from the team and documentation.
Independently creates and maintains Jenkins. Configures CI/CD pipelines. Automates routine operations.
Defines DevOps strategy with Jenkins. Establishes CI/CD standards. Implements platform engineering approaches.
Defines migration strategy from Jenkins to modern CI/CD platforms (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Tekton). Designs transition plan for organizations with hundreds of Jenkins jobs, ensures backward compatibility. Manages legacy Jenkins infrastructure during migration.
Collaboration Tools 1
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Understands documentation as code principle: documentation in Git alongside code. Writes README for infrastructure repositories, creates simple runbooks in Markdown. Knows Markdown basics, uses templates for documentation.
Implements documentation as code: auto-generation from Terraform (terraform-docs), Helm (helm-docs), OpenAPI. Configures MkDocs/Docusaurus for internal documentation, CI/CD for auto-publishing. Creates architecture decision records (ADR).
Defines organizational documentation standards: mandatory documentation for each service, ADR and runbook templates, review processes. Designs Internal Developer Portal with service catalog, automated documentation and search.
Develops knowledge management strategy for engineering organization: Internal Developer Portal (Backstage/Port), automated documentation, living docs. Defines knowledge platform architecture: from auto-generation to AI-powered search and recommendations.
Container Security 1
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Runs Docker image scanning through Trivy by instruction, understands vulnerability severity levels (Critical, High, Medium, Low). Reads scan reports and escalates critical findings to senior engineers.
Integrates container scanning into CI/CD: Trivy, Grype or Snyk Container. Configures quality gates for blocking images with Critical vulnerabilities, generates SBOM through Syft. Manages allowlists for acceptable vulnerabilities.
Defines organizational container security strategy: image admission standards, automated vulnerability management, MTTR metrics for vulnerabilities. Designs centralized scanning platform with SIEM and incident management integration.
Develops corporate container infrastructure security architecture: supply chain security (SLSA Level 3+), zero-trust container runtime, compliance automation. Defines roadmap and standards for all organizational containerization technologies.
Deployment Strategies 2
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Understands blue-green deployment concept: two identical environments, traffic switching. Knows advantages (zero-downtime, fast rollback) and limitations (resources, DB migrations). Observes the deployment process under senior engineer guidance.
Implements blue-green deployments in Kubernetes: through Service selector switch, Argo Rollouts or Istio traffic management. Configures automated post-switch health verification, rollback scripts. Manages database migrations for both-version compatibility.
Defines blue-green deployment standards for the organization: when to apply blue-green vs canary vs rolling, validation checklists. Designs universal deployment pipeline with strategy selection, automated verification and SLO-based promotion.
Develops zero-downtime deployment strategy for all infrastructure: standards for each service type (stateless, stateful, data pipeline). Defines deployment platform architecture with SLO-driven automatic strategy selection and rollback.
Understands canary deployment concept: gradual rollout of new version to a portion of traffic. Knows differences from blue-green, understands the role of metrics in promotion decisions. Observes the canary deployment process.
Implements canary deployments through Argo Rollouts or Istio: configuring promotion steps (10%→30%→70%→100%), integration tests between steps. Defines analysis metrics (error rate, latency, saturation), configures automated rollback.
Defines progressive delivery strategy for the organization: canary analysis standards, mandatory metrics and SLO thresholds for promotion. Designs unified delivery pipeline with automated canary for all service types, incident management integration.
Develops automated progressive delivery architecture: ML-driven canary analysis, automatic deployment strategy selection, chaos engineering integration. Defines safe deployment standards for organizations with thousands of deployments per day.
Distributed Tracing 1
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Understands OpenTelemetry concepts: traces, metrics, logs as three pillars of observability. Knows components: SDK, Collector, exporters. Reads traces in Jaeger/Tempo, understands spans and their relationships in distributed systems.
Deploys and configures OpenTelemetry: OTel Collector in Kubernetes (DaemonSet/Sidecar), SDK integration for applications. Configures auto-instrumentation, processing pipeline (processors, exporters), sending to Jaeger/Tempo/Datadog.
Defines organizational observability strategy on OpenTelemetry: instrumentation standards, semantic conventions, vendor-agnostic pipeline. Designs centralized OTel infrastructure with multi-tenant Collector fleet, governance and cost management.
Develops corporate observability strategy on OpenTelemetry: unified observability platform, standards for all languages and frameworks. Defines full-stack observability architecture: from infrastructure to business metrics with automatic correlation.
DNS & Networking 3
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Understands CDN principles: caching, edge servers, PoP points, TTL. Configures basic CloudFront/Cloudflare distributions by instruction. Knows the difference between origin and edge, understands CDN's role in performance.
Configures and manages CDN: CloudFront with custom origins, cache behaviors, Lambda@Edge. Optimizes cache hit ratio through proper headers, configures invalidation in CI/CD. Configures Cloudflare Workers for edge computing.
Defines organizational edge infrastructure strategy: CDN provider selection, configuration standards, CDN FinOps. Designs edge computing architecture for latency reduction, monitoring integration and alerting for global availability.
Develops global edge strategy: multi-CDN with intelligent failover, edge computing platform, architecture for serving millions of users. Defines content and API delivery standards for all organizational products.
Understands load balancing principles: round-robin, least connections, health checks. Knows the difference between L4 and L7 balancers, understands the role of ALB/NLB in AWS. Configures basic Kubernetes Service of LoadBalancer type.
Configures load balancers: AWS ALB/NLB with target groups, Nginx Ingress in Kubernetes, HAProxy. Configures SSL termination, sticky sessions, health checks. Manages Ingress resources with annotations for different controllers.
Defines organizational load balancing strategy: standards for all service types, configuration automation, service mesh integration. Designs global traffic architecture considering disaster recovery and multi-region failover.
Develops global traffic management architecture: intelligent load balancing with ML, multi-cloud traffic management, standards for thousands of services. Defines routing platform with automatic failover, canary routing and A/B testing at infrastructure level.
Understands VPN principles: tunneling, encryption, protocols (IPSec, WireGuard, OpenVPN). Connects to corporate VPN, understands the difference between site-to-site and client VPN. Knows basic network security concepts.
Configures VPN solutions: AWS Site-to-Site VPN, WireGuard for dev environments, OpenVPN Access Server. Manages certificates and keys, configures split-tunneling and routing. Integrates VPN with cloud VPCs and Kubernetes clusters.
Defines remote access strategy: transition from traditional VPN to zero-trust (BeyondCorp), connection standards for all teams. Designs secure access architecture for multi-cloud environment with centralized management and auditing.
Develops corporate network access strategy: zero-trust architecture, SASE model, identity provider integration. Defines architecture for secure access to thousands of services from anywhere, standards for all organizational units.
GitOps 2
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Understands basic ArgoCD concepts including Application resources, sync status indicators, and the GitOps deployment model. Follows team runbooks for monitoring application sync state and troubleshooting failed syncs in the ArgoCD dashboard. Uses existing Application manifests to deploy microservices through the GitOps pipeline.
Independently configures ArgoCD Applications with sync policies, health checks, and resource hooks for CI/CD pipeline integration. Writes ApplicationSets with Git and cluster generators for multi-environment deployments. Implements notification integrations, sync windows, and automated rollback configurations for production delivery workflows.
Defines ArgoCD platform strategy and GitOps delivery standards across the engineering organization. Establishes governance frameworks for multi-tenant ArgoCD deployments including project structures, RBAC hierarchies, and change management workflows. Conducts architecture reviews and mentors teams on GitOps best practices and ArgoCD operational excellence.
Shapes enterprise-wide GitOps architecture with ArgoCD as the cornerstone of continuous delivery strategy. Drives innovation in ArgoCD extensibility through custom resource actions, config management plugins, and integration with service mesh control planes. Influences ArgoCD project roadmap and contributes to CNCF GitOps working group standards.
Understands GitOps concept: Git as single source of truth for infrastructure and deployment, pull-based deployment model. Knows basic tools: ArgoCD, Flux. Understands the difference from push-based CI/CD (Jenkins, GitLab CI).
Implements GitOps workflow: configures ArgoCD/Flux for automatic synchronization of Kubernetes manifests from Git, organizes Git repository structure (app-of-apps, monorepo vs multi-repo), manages secrets through Sealed Secrets or External Secrets Operator.
Standardizes GitOps for the organization: defines repository strategy and branching model for GitOps repos, creates templates for standardized deployments, implements GitOps compliance (audit trail, change approval). Trains teams on GitOps practices.
Shapes enterprise GitOps strategy: designs multi-cluster GitOps with ArgoCD for fleet management, defines governance for GitOps across organizational boundaries. Influences industry practices through GitOps maturity model and best practices.
Incident Management 1
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Understands on-call principles: duty schedules, escalation, incident management. Participates in on-call under senior engineer guidance, responds to alerts following runbooks. Knows tools: PagerDuty, Opsgenie, VictorOps.
Configures on-call processes: schedules in PagerDuty/Opsgenie, escalation policies, alert routing rules. Creates runbooks for typical incidents, automates initial diagnostics. Conducts post-mortems and tracks action items.
Defines organizational incident management strategy: severity level standards, escalation matrices, communication protocols. Designs blameless post-mortem process, MTTR/MTTA metrics, SRE on-call program with sustainable rotation.
Develops corporate incident management culture: SRE principles, toil budgets, 80% incident automation. Defines AIOps platform architecture: ML-powered alert correlation, automated remediation, predictive incident prevention.
Infrastructure as Code 2
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Understands basic Ansible concepts including playbooks, modules, inventory, and the push-based configuration model. Follows team playbooks for server configuration, application deployment, and routine maintenance tasks. Uses ansible-playbook and ansible commands to execute existing automation and reviews task output to verify successful execution across managed hosts.
Independently writes Ansible playbooks and roles for deployment automation, configuration management, and infrastructure provisioning in CI/CD pipelines. Implements dynamic inventories, Jinja2 templates for environment-specific configurations, and handlers for service management. Structures automation code with reusable roles, variable hierarchies, and tags for selective task execution across development, staging, and production environments.
Defines Ansible automation standards and DevOps workflow patterns across the engineering organization. Establishes playbook development guidelines, testing practices with Molecule and ansible-lint, and Tower/AWX governance for team self-service automation. Conducts architecture reviews of automation codebases and mentors teams on idempotent design, secret management, and scalable role development.
Shapes the organization's configuration management and automation strategy with Ansible at its core. Drives innovation in Ansible automation patterns including event-driven automation, GitOps-integrated playbook delivery, and infrastructure testing frameworks. Influences the Ansible community through collection development, upstream contributions, and thought leadership on enterprise-scale configuration management practices.
Understands Terraform fundamentals: HCL syntax, resource lifecycle, and state management. Writes simple resource definitions for common cloud services. Uses terraform plan to preview changes before applying. Works with existing modules and follows team conventions.
Develops Terraform configurations for cloud infrastructure: modules, variables, outputs, remote state in S3/GCS. Creates reusable modules, configures workspaces for multi-environment setups. Manages state through backend and state locking.
Defines organizational IaC standards on Terraform: module registry, code review processes, blast radius management. Designs Terraform Cloud/Enterprise architecture for multi-team work, naming standards, tagging and cost allocation.
Develops Infrastructure as Code strategy for the entire organization: multi-cloud modular architecture, Terraform + Pulumi + CDK for different use cases. Defines self-service infrastructure platform with ready-made module catalog and automated compliance.
Infrastructure Security 1
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Understands the importance of secrets management, doesn't store passwords in code. Uses HashiCorp Vault for reading secrets by instruction, works with basic vault CLI commands. Knows the difference between environment secrets and vault storage.
Configures and administers HashiCorp Vault: KV and PKI secret engines, access policies, authentication through Kubernetes and AppRole. Integrates Vault into CI/CD pipelines for automatic secret injection, configures rotation.
Defines organizational secrets management strategy: Vault integration standards with all systems, rotation and access policies, automated new service onboarding. Designs multi-cluster Vault architecture with DR.
Develops corporate secrets and certificate management platform: multi-regional Vault with automated failover, PKI infrastructure, HSM integration. Defines data encryption policies and compliance requirements for all infrastructure.
Kubernetes & Orchestration 3
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Installs applications through Helm from ready-made charts, understands values.yaml structure. Performs helm install/upgrade/rollback by instruction, views releases through helm list. Knows basic chart structure (templates, Chart.yaml).
Creates custom Helm charts for service deployment: Kubernetes resource templating, helpers and named templates, dependency management. Configures values for different environments (dev/staging/prod), publishes charts to ChartMuseum.
Defines organizational Helm strategy: standard library charts, versioning and publishing processes, automated dependency updates. Designs internal Helm registry with CI/CD for charts, templates for most common deployment patterns.
Develops platform Kubernetes application packaging strategy: choosing between Helm, Kustomize and Carvel, standards for 100+ services. Defines self-service deployment architecture with golden paths, automated validation and policy enforcement.
Understands advanced Kubernetes concepts: CustomResourceDefinitions, operators, admission webhooks. Studies cluster architecture (etcd, API server, scheduler, controller manager). Works with kubectl for problem diagnostics under senior engineer guidance.
Configures advanced Kubernetes features: HPA/VPA for autoscaling, PodDisruptionBudget, affinity/anti-affinity rules. Manages RBAC policies, configures NetworkPolicy for namespace isolation. Deploys and manages operators (cert-manager, external-dns).
Defines organizational Kubernetes platform architecture: cluster standards, multi-cluster management (Rancher/Tanzu), federation. Designs platform engineering layer: Kubernetes abstractions for developers, CIS benchmark security standards.
Develops organizational container orchestration strategy: multi-cloud Kubernetes clusters, service mesh architecture, platform engineering vision. Defines platform evolution from Kubernetes to Internal Developer Platform, mentors platform engineering teams.
Understands core Kubernetes resources: Pod, Deployment, Service, ConfigMap, Secret. Deploys applications through kubectl apply, views logs and pod status. Knows the difference between ClusterIP, NodePort and LoadBalancer services.
Manages full deployment lifecycle in Kubernetes: creating Deployment/StatefulSet, configuring Ingress, managing ConfigMap and Secret. Debugs issues through describe/logs/exec, configures readiness/liveness probes and resource requests/limits.
Defines Kubernetes deployment standards: golden path for developers, manifest templates, mandatory checks (OPA/Kyverno). Designs release promotion processes between environments, automates canary and blue-green deployments.
Develops Kubernetes-as-a-platform strategy for the entire organization: workload management standards, developer abstractions, container infrastructure maturity model. Defines architectural decisions for scaling to thousands of pods and hundreds of services.
Message Queues & Event Streaming 1
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Uses Apache Kafka at a basic level in Terraform/Ansible. Performs simple tasks using established templates. Understands basic concepts and follows team practices.
Independently implements tasks with Apache Kafka in Terraform/Ansible. Understands internals and optimizes performance. Writes tests with Terratest/InSpec.
Designs event platform architecture on Kafka for DevOps: log aggregation, streaming alert processing, event sourcing of infrastructure changes. Optimizes cluster performance, configures geo-replication and disaster recovery.
Defines organizational event-driven architecture strategy based on Kafka. Designs real-time platform for processing millions of infrastructure events: configuration changes, alerts, deployment metrics. Ensures exactly-once semantics for critical operations.
Metrics & Monitoring 2
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Understands Prometheus metric types: counter, gauge, histogram, summary. Knows the difference between infrastructure and business metrics. Reads existing custom metrics, understands naming conventions (namespace_subsystem_name_unit).
Develops custom metrics for DevOps: CI/CD pipeline metrics (build duration, success rate), deployment frequency, change failure rate. Creates exporters in Python/Go, instruments applications through client libraries. Configures recording rules.
Defines organizational metrics standards: mandatory SLIs for each service tier, DORA metrics dashboard, FinOps metrics. Designs metrics platform with standard metrics catalog, self-service instrumentation and automated alerting.
Develops metrics-driven operations strategy: ML-powered anomaly detection on custom metrics, predictive scaling, business observability. Defines unified metrics platform architecture for correlating infrastructure, application and business metrics.
Understands basic Prometheus & Grafana for DevOps: setting up Prometheus exporters, creating basic Grafana dashboards for infrastructure metrics, understanding PromQL basics for metric queries. Follows team conventions for monitoring CI/CD pipelines and deployment infrastructure.
Deploys and configures Prometheus stack: kube-prometheus-stack in Kubernetes, ServiceMonitor/PodMonitor, alerting rules. Creates Grafana dashboards for infrastructure and applications, configures alertmanager with routing to Slack/PagerDuty.
Defines organizational monitoring strategy: metric standards (RED, USE), mandatory dashboards for each service, SLO framework. Designs centralized Prometheus platform with multi-tenancy, cost-effective retention and self-service for teams.
Develops organizational metrics platform architecture: multi-cluster Prometheus with Thanos/Cortex, scaling to millions of time series. Defines observability strategy: unified metrics, logs, traces with correlation and ML-driven insights.
Release Management 1
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Understands feature flag concept: enabling/disabling functionality without deployment. Uses flags in code by instruction, knows basic types (boolean, percentage). Works with LaunchDarkly/Unleash dashboard to view flags.
Implements feature flags in CI/CD: LaunchDarkly/Unleash/Flagsmith integration, flag management through API. Configures percentage rollout, A/B testing, targeting rules. Automates flag lifecycle: creation on deploy, cleanup of stale flags.
Defines organizational feature management standards: flag governance, mandatory metadata, review processes. Designs progressive delivery platform integrating feature flags, monitoring and automated SLO-based rollback.
Develops organizational progressive delivery strategy: unified feature management platform, experimentation standards (A/B, multivariate). Defines architecture for safe deployment of any changes with automatic rollback on metric degradation.
System Design 1
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Understands DR concepts: RPO, RTO, backup/restore, hot/warm/cold standby. Performs scheduled backups, verifies backup integrity by instruction. Knows main risks and failure scenarios in cloud infrastructure.
Implements DR solutions: automated backups (Velero for Kubernetes, AWS Backup), cross-region data replication. Configures automated database failover, tests restore procedures. Documents DR plans and runbooks.
Defines organizational DR strategy: service classification by criticality, RPO/RTO standards for each tier. Designs automated DR testing platform, game day processes and tabletop exercises. Manages DR budget and prioritization.
Develops corporate business continuity and disaster recovery strategy: multi-cloud DR, automated failover for the entire platform. Defines resilience engineering architecture: chaos engineering culture, gameday framework, continuous DR validation.
Web Frameworks 1
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Uses Python Web Frameworks at a basic level in Terraform/Ansible. Performs simple tasks using established templates. Understands basic concepts and follows team practices.
Independently implements tasks with Python Web Frameworks in Terraform/Ansible. Understands internals and optimizes performance. Writes tests with Terratest/InSpec.
Designs internal DevOps platform architecture on Python: self-service portals for developers, environment management systems, API gateway for infrastructure operations. Defines development standards and ensures solution scalability.
Defines internal Developer Platform strategy based on Python frameworks. Develops Internal Developer Portal architecture integrating CI/CD, monitoring and infrastructure into a unified self-service interface. Establishes API-first approach standards for DevOps tooling.