What a Junior } should know

Understands basic Ansible concepts for platform component configuration and deployment automation. Follows team playbooks for provisioning platform services — container runtimes, service mesh components, monitoring agents, and load balancer configurations. Uses ansible-playbook to execute existing platform automation and reviews output for deployment issues across platform infrastructure hosts.

Works with basic AWS services for the platform: EC2, S3, VPC, IAM. Uses AWS Console and CLI for managing resources in dev account. Understands the shared responsibility model and IAM policy basics. Configures CloudWatch for basic platform resource monitoring.

Configures basic CDN (CloudFront, Cloudflare) for platform UI component static assets. Understands caching, TTL and invalidation. Configures custom domains and SSL certificates. Diagnoses caching issues through HTTP headers.

Runs Trivy/Grype for scanning images in local environment, analyzes CVE reports. Understands the difference between critical/high/medium vulnerabilities and their impact on platform services. Updates base images based on scan results.

Understands Crossplane provider model and Claims workflow. Uses existing Compositions to expose self-service infrastructure APIs to dev teams. Validates resource status and resolves basic provisioning errors with guidance.

Creates Dockerfiles for platform microservices, understands image layers and caching. Uses multi-stage builds to reduce image size. Works with Docker Compose for local platform component development, configures volume mounting and network connections between services.

Understands Envoy sidecar model and service mesh data plane concepts. Applies existing filter chains and route configurations for service-to-service communication. Monitors proxy metrics and health check endpoints under guidance.

Understands GCP platform services: GKE, Cloud Run, and Cloud Build. Configures basic infrastructure using Terraform with GCP provider. Works with Artifact Registry and Cloud Logging.

Uses ready-made Helm charts for deploying platform components (Prometheus, Grafana, cert-manager). Understands values.yaml and can customize deployment parameters. Works with helm install/upgrade/rollback for managing releases in dev environment.

Understands Istio architecture including control plane and data plane components. Uses existing Istio configurations for service discovery and load balancing. Troubleshoots basic connectivity issues in the mesh.

Works with namespaces and RBAC for team isolation on the platform. Configures ResourceQuotas and LimitRanges for tenants. Understands Ingress controllers and network policies. Uses kubectl for diagnosing cluster problems.

Deploys applications via Deployment, Service, ConfigMap in the platform dev cluster. Understands Pod lifecycle and ReplicaSet behavior. Uses kubectl logs/describe/exec for debugging. Configures liveness and readiness probes for platform components.

Configures Application Load Balancer for platform services: target groups, health checks, routing rules. Understands the difference between ALB/NLB/CLB and their use cases. Configures SSL termination and redirect rules. Debugs 502/503 errors through CloudWatch metrics.

Understands TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP for diagnosing platform network issues. Uses curl, dig, traceroute for debugging connectivity. Configures Security Groups and NACLs in cloud infrastructure. Understands the difference between L4 and L7 load balancing for platform services.

Understands basic Pulumi IaC concepts: program structure, resource declarations, and preview/apply workflow. Deploys platform components using existing Pulumi code and Automation API examples. Follows team guidelines for stack isolation, tagging policies, and CI/CD integration patterns.

Understands serverless container platforms for developer self-service. Configures Cloud Run or Fargate task definitions with Terraform. Sets up logging, health checks, and basic auto-scaling policies.

Creates simple Lambda/Cloud Functions for automating platform tasks: webhook handlers, notifications, scheduled jobs. Configures triggers (API Gateway, CloudWatch Events). Understands cold start and execution limits. Tests functions locally via SAM/serverless.

Writes basic Terraform configurations for platform resources: VPC, EC2, S3. Understands state files and resource lifecycle. Uses terraform plan/apply for deploying to dev environment. Works with variables and outputs for module parameterization.

Understands basic ArgoCD concepts for managing platform service deployments through GitOps. Follows team procedures for monitoring Application sync health and reviewing deployment logs in ArgoCD. Uses existing Application manifests to deploy platform components such as service meshes, ingress controllers, and observability stacks.

Understands blue-green deployment principles and its benefits for zero-downtime on the platform. Performs traffic switching between blue and green environments by following instructions. Verifies health checks of new environment before switch. Participates in rollback when issues arise.

Understands the canary deployment concept and how it differs from blue-green for the platform. Monitors canary release metrics via Grafana/Prometheus. Escalates issues when metrics degrade. Participates in configuring traffic split through ArgoCD Rollouts by following instructions.

Uses feature flags (LaunchDarkly, Unleash) for controlled rollout of platform features. Creates boolean and multivariate flags. Understands targeting rules and percentage-based rollout. Participates in cleanup of stale flags following team instructions.

Creates basic GitHub Actions workflows for CI of platform components: lint, test, build. Uses ready-made actions from Marketplace. Configures triggers (push, PR) and matrix builds. Understands workflow YAML syntax and secrets management.

Writes basic .gitlab-ci.yml pipelines for platform projects: stages, jobs, artifacts. Uses predefined variables and rules for conditional execution. Configures Docker executor for runners. Understands caching and job dependencies.

Understands GitOps as a platform pattern: knows how the platform can provide GitOps-as-a-service for development teams. Can work with ArgoCD/Flux at the Application resource creation level.

Understands the fundamentals of Progressive Delivery. Applies basic practices in daily work. Follows recommendations from the team and documentation.