Roles · Infrastructure Engineer · Junior

What a Junior } should know

1 core skills, 60 in total. Expectations per skill, and what changes at the next level.

This page lists what a Junior } is expected to know and do, skill by skill. Core skills are the ones a manager and peers assess in a review cycle; the rest count only in self-assessment. Main areas: DevOps & CI/CD.

1core skills
59additional skills
1skill areas
0%at Advanced or Expert
Assess myself as Junior Full role matrix

Core skills for a Junior

Grouped by area. The label on the right is the expected depth: Awareness, Working, Advanced or Expert.

DevOps & CI/CD · 1

GitOps Practices Awareness

Understands GitOps for infrastructure: knows how Terraform/Pulumi state is managed through Git, understands declarative infrastructure management. Can commit infrastructure changes to Git and observe automatic application.

Additional skills

Not assessed by the team, but part of the self-assessment and the development plan.

Algorithms & ComplexityAnsibleApache KafkaAPI DocumentationAsync ProgrammingAWSBackup & Disaster RecoveryCapacity PlanningCDN & Edge ComputingChaos EngineeringChatGPT / ClaudeCloud SecurityCode Quality & RefactoringCode ReviewContainer Security ScanningCrossplaneCursor IDEData StructuresDatabase IndexingDesign PatternsDisaster Recovery DesignDockerDocumentation as CodeEnvoy ProxyGit AdvancedGitHub Actions / GitLab CIGitHub CopilotGraphQL DesignHelmIntegration TestingIstio Service MeshKubernetes AdvancedKubernetes CoreKubernetes SecurityLoad BalancingMultithreadingNetwork FundamentalsNetwork SecurityOOP & SOLID PrinciplesOpenTelemetryOWASP & Application SecurityPostgreSQLPrometheus & GrafanaPrompt Engineering for CodePulumiPython Web FrameworksRedisReplication & High AvailabilityREST API DesignSecrets ManagementSecure Coding PracticesServerless FunctionsSLI / SLO / SLAStructured LoggingSystem Design FundamentalsTerraformType Safety & Type SystemsUnit TestingVPN & Network Isolation

What changes at Mid-level

60 skills get a higher expectation or become core when moving from Junior to Mid-level. The biggest jumps first.

See the Mid-level page →
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} in the open competency matrix: 60 skills across 5 levels. The matrix is free for individuals and stays free.