DevOps Engineer

What they do

• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines (build, test, deploy)
• Manage cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Use Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible)
• Monitor systems and troubleshoot production issues
• Work with containers (Docker, Kubernetes)

Entry pathways

Ways to get into this role in the UK:

• Degree in Computer Science or IT, or strong sysadmin background
• DevOps/Cloud apprenticeship
• Starting as Software Developer or System Administrator
• Cloud certifications (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Self-taught with homelab and cloud projects

A day in the life

You start by checking the monitoring dashboards—everything's green, which is exactly what you want to see. A developer has opened a pull request, so you review the CI pipeline run: tests passed, security scan is clean, deployment to staging went smoothly. Mid-morning you investigate a slow API response that appeared in yesterday's logs, tracing it back to an inefficient database query. After lunch you work on improving the deployment pipeline, adding a step that automatically rolls back if error rates spike. Late afternoon you update the infrastructure-as-code config to spin up a new environment for a client demo, then document what you changed so the team can reproduce it.